


Litany of the Flower

by MightBeEntropy



Series: The Dandelion's Plight [1]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, As I have been informed, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Faeries - Freeform, Feral Jaskier | Dandelion, He maims someone, Heartbreak of the week, I blame it on the fact that he is fae, Jaskier commits arson, Jaskier is a little shit, Jaskier is in denial about his immortality, M/M, Monster of the Week, Multi, Non-Human Jaskier | Dandelion, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Not beta read we die like Jaskier canonically will eventually, Pining, Poetry, Swearing, Unreliable Narrator, Unrequited Love, Unresolved Romantic Tension, VERY Feral Jaskier, for now, sequel planned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:34:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23838415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MightBeEntropy/pseuds/MightBeEntropy
Summary: “That’s a new one, isn’t it?”Jaskier’s inhale rattles. “I wrote it months back, actually.”Geralt side-eyes him curiously. He is more than a little bit drunk, Jaskier thinks; there is a droplet of ale glistening on his upper lip that his witcher seems not to notice. “You wrote it while we were apart?”“Not everything is about you, my dear. But your jealousy is welcome- if unwarranted. I am already composing a new song about my darling muse.” The bard brushes the droplet away with light and exceedingly gentle fingers, smiling at the way the other man blinks in surprise, eyes dilating from the stimulation. “Go back to our room to sleep. You look tired, and we have a monster to hunt tomorrow.”Geralt frowns. “You’re not coming with me tomorrow. You're staying here. ‘S safe here.”Jaskier laughs. His witcher’s breath is hot against his cheek when the bard turns away. “Since when do I listen to a word you say?”Or; For all his enthrallment with his witcher, Jaskier's muse has always been heartbreak since the very beginning.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: The Dandelion's Plight [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1667620
Comments: 90
Kudos: 481





	Litany of the Flower

**Author's Note:**

> It turns out squeezing decades of experiences under 20k words is really difficult.

“There is nothing dignified about you.” his father tells him, disappointment palpable.

This may or may not be the truth. Probably the former if one sees that Julian does not behave like a nobleman’s son should, even though he likes the silks and soaps that accompany a noble’s opulent lifestyle. He even likes the parties and finds impeccable manners tasteful and ever so helpful in charming adults who pat his head and let him do whatever he wants, rationalising in their heads that the sweet count’s heir would never get into trouble or do anything untoward, to his mother’s amusement and his father’s exasperation. His father cuffs him gruffly at the back of his head once they are alone, disapproval pinning Julian to the spot like he is a particularly persistent cockroach. The metaphor hits a little too close to home; for all of Julian’s upper class manners and charisma- he is wretched and filthy on the inside like a feral cat that has been kicked in the head a few too many times. Under his clean and polished skin, under the finery dyed colours only lords can afford, his blood is black like sewage with the odor of compost. There is no golden dignity like his father so desperately hopes there might be. In his creature’s bones there is a pitch-black tar that soaks into his joints and howls _I want to live_ in a fevered pitch that makes his knuckles hum with the urge to be buried in the faces of people he detests, or tells him to scratch someone’s eyes out. 

He gets into fights, stupid ones with village boys’ sweat and rust worn with pride on his oldest, cheapest clothes, and his father backhands him across the face. “You are the son of a count. Have a little dignity.”

Dignity is just a word, Julian wants to say. Dignity is the invitation to loneliness. Having dignity is just like being smothered in expensive carpets and choking on lace so tight you had to bite your tongue and taste yesterday’s blood on your teeth. Julian is a wild thing. Wild things do not have dignity. Everyone- the village children, his father, his nanny, looks at Julian like he is mad and dangerous even as they are drowning in the weight of the actions their dignity justifies.

Pride and cheek smarting, Julian hides in the main kitchen and threatens to run away into the woods to get kidnapped by the fair folk. Or the witchers. His mother laughs, properly, with teeth and tongue instead of her delicate giggling at parties where the back of her hand muffles the brightness of her spirit. She is a wild thing too, with auburn hair like a sunset and eyes like an ocean Julian has never seen. They are wild things together in an alabaster house of statues and marble masks, tracking in rain and mud and the smell of forest under their feet into empty halls, always only two steps away from tipping over porcelain and crystal with claws sharp like a beast’s. This is immensely comforting.

“Once upon a time,” She whispers to his hiding spot beneath a chair, tongue tucked between a curved smile like she is telling him a secret, kneeling right by his side so her skirts pool over his muddied shoes. “-your father was a wild thing too.”

Julian frowns, wrinkling his nose in disbelief. His mother laughs again at his expression. “Oh, little flower, people change.”

“How do you change them back?” He demands, thinking of disdain and dignity.

His mother’s expression stretches like a linen band about to snap. She is laughing again but the sound is not pleasant. “With love.”

“Like true love’s kiss? Like in the stories?”

“No.”

“Then?”

A beat of reticence.

“...my skirts are getting wrinkled. It is time to get off the floor, don’t you think?” 

Julian scowls, because his mother is a wild thing who does not care about whether her dress is wrinkled or not. “You’re avoiding the question!”

“Julian…” She sighs, straightening and brushing dust off herself deliberately. “You have a big heart, but there is no easy answer for this.”

He crawls out from under the table and tries to grab her face. He misses. “I’m going to help you change him back, mama! You need to tell me how!”

“You will be able to figure it out yourself once you fall in love, flower.”

He frowns. “Fine.”

He takes her hand and lets her lead him away, trying not to feel like he has just made a deal with her not to bring his father’s nasty temperament to her attention ever again. The finality in her firm grip around his wrist hints at his continued silence, so he obliges. After all, he has better things to give than just his words. He has a deal to uphold.

“I will fall in love by the end of the week.” He informs her sagely.

“Love, that was not a challenge.” She rubs at the furrow in her brow, but her eyes are smiling and when his mother’s eyes smile, the suffocation drawn curtains and quiet hallways often harbring are eased by the quirk of her lips. Julian wants power like that sometimes, the power to sway an entire house with a facial expression. But it would be a lot of responsibility.

“Father does say I’m a precocious little shite.” He reminds her, and she is outright snorting.

“Don’t take him too seriously. He already takes himself too seriously. Come to think of it, don’t take anyone too seriously, not even yourself.”

Julian takes her words to heart, even when he gives a piece of it away to the music tutor’s daughter and her shrilly soprano. True to his word, he finds himself sneaking into the fields behind the estate within the week to pick flowers in the wee morning hours and clutches satiny petals in trembling fists as he knocks on the door to her quarters. 

He hands her a flower, gold and shining. 

“It’s poisonous.” She says flatly, and tosses it back into his face. The sickly-sweet smell of it makes him dizzy and nauseous, his eyes stinging. He runs away.

It turns out one of buttercup’s meanings is to be unfaithful, Julian learns later, sobbing into his mother’s skirts out of an overwhelming emotion that is more frustration than any real sorrow. She looks in equal parts amused and exasperated, her blue eyes fondly concerned as she runs slender fingers through his hair. “You probably should have gone with dandelions, hmm? There, there, my little buttercup.”

“Buttercups are poisonous.” He hiccups, pressing sticky hands over silk.

“If you say so, little jaskier. I happen to think they’re lovely.”

Nearly a decade later, when the discomfiting press of intricate architecture in banquet halls and ballrooms turns into pins and needles constantly raking at his skin, he leaves, bags heavy with the gravity of a letter he swears will change his destiny forevermore, the name sticks like buttercup seeds getting caught in between fingers and toes, petals fragmenting on Julian’s fine clothes and hair. 

“My name’s Valdo. What do I call you?” A boy asks shyly, red sneaking over his freckles. He is not the first person to approach Julian in Oxenfurt; most of the students can somehow sniff out blue blooded folk with natural proficiency even without Julian breathing a word of confirmation.

‘Julian Alfred Pankratz’ is a noble’s name. Dignified. Introducing himself with it feels too much like a victory favouring his father. 

“Jaskier,” He says instead. Maybe he should have gone with Dandelion?

_I plant my love in the ground_

_Like buttercups in a row_

_Poisonous heads whispering_

_Their faces put on a show_

_And I speak naught but the truth_

_Sure’s the sun rises t’morrow_

_And the moon will set at dawn_

_My love for you will grow_

Valdo Marx plays with his heart quite messily, and for all his sweetness and prey-like submission, Jaskier is a bloody idiot for not noticing that the gentleness of his movements had the grace of a predator, the type of predator that paints themselves in shadows and exposes their throat only to distract so prey do not notice when they bites theirs. It turns out all of Jaskier’s fears of the wild thing in him eating his lover whole is completely unfounded; Valdo is a far worse kind of wild thing. He is a smart one, the kind Jaskier has little experience in dealing with.

If anyone asks, Jaskier will say the day was grey and dark- an overcast sky painted with colours that herald gloom and melancholy, but in truth the day itself had been warm, the kind of weather that misleads and deceives with its perfection and Jaskier is resentful that the weather had not been saturnine and storming, for as it happens, the evening is warmly pleasant when he finds the love of his quaintly short life prying loose a floorboard covering a hollowed section of the floor, filled halfway with Jaskier’s coins and songs. 

“Those are mine,” He says, eloquence fleeing and jumping out of the window in the wake of the confounded fury blooming in his chest. Valdo freezes, but does not look up. Jaskier clears his throat and repeats himself like legibility had been the reason behind his lover’s guilty silence. “Those are _mine_.”

“I know, Jas.” Valdo states with frigid neutrality. The slump of his shoulder is defeated and sad but Jaskier makes no move to comfort him. Kindness in that moment feels like a fantasy spun by hopeful bards.

Instead he bares his teeth in response, vision swimming with the way his breaths are glued inside his throat and persist in staying there. He manages to growl darkly when Valdo twitches his hand towards the sheets of music Jaskier knows had been in his satchel hours prior. “You’ve been stealing from me.”

“Yes.”

Valdo finally tilts his head to stare at Jaskier, something defiant in his eyes. Green, like envy. The poet in him laughs madly. “Why?”

His lover shrugs loosely. “You’re the better writer out of the two of us.”

“You… I would have helped you!” He _did_ help him. Pulled him away from the dark spiral of his thoughts and did his damndest to add colour to his lover’s life when the world filtered into monochrome. Sang every song he knew, threw himself into ridiculous scenarios.

“Perhaps. But it is better this way.” 

Valdo looks pitiful. Collar rumpled, clothing streaked with dust and tears from crawling on the floor, doe eyes wide and watery. He is losing in every possible aspect. Despite himself, Jaskier nearly throws away his betrayal to sit next to his lover until he sees that Valdo smiles like a winner.

“Why are you smiling? What have you done?” He demands and takes a step back, alarm replacing fury.

There are too many teeth in the smile to look natural. “You’re my ticket out of here, _Julian._ ”

“You’re not going anywhere- the academy will not let you get away with stealing another student’s work-”

Valdo scoffs in a weak display of effort. “I’ve been stealing from you for months. Every time you wrote something you were too prideful to show off without an occasion, every little love song you forgot to pay attention to… sometimes I just made copies.”

His chest _aches_ like he is out of breath. “Y-you bloody fu-fucking bastard! Do you think I’ll let you submit that as your own?”

“Yes. I’ve already done it a few times. Nobody notices. You’re not that special, Jas.” Fingernails are digging crimson crescents into his palms. Valdo still has not moved, still stares with empty eyes and shaky fingers, but Jaskier is backing away, step by step with the acute desperation of being cornered that is roaring into his hindbrain.

“I’ll tell everyone-”

“And who do you think they will believe? A model student, or one who has successfully integrated himself into every possible fight on campus?” Jaskier’s back hits the wall. At the sound, the glazed-over quality in Valdo’s eyes melts into sharp focus. “You make it really easy, Jaskier.”

“ _I loved you!_ ” 

"And I you, but this is less personal than you think. I need to get out of this god forsaken prison, and you provided me a way. Oxenfurt sponsors good students, and I’m not letting you ruin my chances by suddenly growing a conscience. Not that anyone will believe you.” Like it is that simple and easy, like Jaskier is not _wilting and screaming and the thing under his skin is just begging for retribution_ -

“Lies make better stories, Jaskier. And everyone wants to believe the better story.”

“ _Then I will write a better one_!” Jaskier howls. His breathing has condensed into harsh gulps taken too periodically to ease the burn of his lungs. 

He runs.

The bitter black thing in his bones drips syrup into his bloodstream when he forgets to eat, burns his fingers to productivity and slickens his lute strings with red when his fingers are sliced open. The song he writes is similarly bloody and betrayed. Lustful. Tragic.

The professors fucking love it. Jaskier wins… something. A sense of satisfaction? Probably. It is too hard to tell.

Collar rumpled and grades astounding, Jaskier leaves Oxenfurt with lute, legacy and broken heart in hand and steps into the blistering light of a wintry sunset setting tilled fields ablaze with a fury Jaskier feels simmering behind his eyelids. Spite drives him forward, fuels his footsteps even when he runs out of coin and song, collapsing on the path to Posada. 

It has been a long month or so. Gods he is tired. Not physically. Maybe a little physically. He feels so _old_.

“Fuck you, destiny.”

Destiny speaks back in its own way, rewarding his profanity with the apparent ornery tempers of half-drunk Posadians. Day drinking is popular, it seems, and nearly everyone in the tavern Jaskier manages to quench his thirst at is either nursing worse hangovers than the ones the university students managed to acquire in Oxenfurt or ordering ale after ale like the lioness of Cintra herself were en route to pull Posada off the mountains. There is a metaphor for that, something about pulling brain matter out of heads and stuffing them with cotton like clouds instead. Posadians keep their heads in the clouds, stuffed with clouds, whatever. Poetry takes effort, and Jaskier is a broke and starving beggar if giving fucks about everyone who crossed his path were a currency.

He is a ship lost at sea without a muse, and he longs for one that will not break his heart like the previous one did. Burning every song and poem he had written for Marx was little comfort, and not enough penance for the blood and tears Jaskier had devoted to him. His bad month just keeps getting longer.

Jaskier sighs, sifting through the most intact pieces of bread. The crowd ignores him, mostly, and he fervently decides their attitude does not reflect on his performance by even the smallest amount. Why did he think Posadians had taste to begin with? For Melitele’s sake, they smell of stale grain, sweat and… acid.

He looks up.

A man clad in black and shrouded in mystery, staring at his purse like it would burst into flames. A tang of acid and chemicals. Alchemist? No, there is something off about the man, something that grates on the hairs at the back of his neck and bites at the edges of his senses. Something dangerous. It is in his posture; he is a dire wolf among rabbits and lesser prey, greater and bigger than humankind. A monster, maybe. Jaskier should stay away from monsters.

Jaskier nearly trips over a barmaid in his faux swagger to get closer, exhaustion forgotten.

“I love the way you just sit in the corner and brood.”

The man’s lips thin as he glances away. “I’m here to drink alone.”

Jaskier fights a smile and nods. Perhaps the lone wolf allegory was not far off. “Good. Yeah, good.”

Acid, chaos, alchemy. Thrilling is the scent of ozone- otherworldly and unnatural as lightning drawn from the heavens. Jaskier cradles the ale in his hands, feeling mortal and mulling over how far he can push the man before he stabs Jaskier in the bollocks out of sheer annoyance. “No one else hesitated to comment on the quality of my performance, except…”

He deliberates and steps closer. “-for you. Come on.”

“You don’t want to keep a man with…” A grimace tugs the corners of his mouth. Where has his silver tongue fled to? “...bread in his pants waiting.”

The man is unimpressed. Jaskier finds this unacceptable.

“You must have some review for me. Three words or less.” The man’s eyes are yellow, Jaskier muses. Gold like some wolf or wildcat, like a predator. Like buttercups and dandelions.

“They don’t exist.” The man states flatly, the boredom seeping into his tone belying the threat in his eyes. Jaskier finds the gruffness positively endearing.

“What don’t exist?” Jaskier queries distractedly.

“The creatures in your song.” 

Lies make better stories, but Jaskier does not like explaining himself. Also. “And how would you know?”

There is a deadpan silence. Somehow. Jaskier is very impressed with this… witcher’s capability for non-verbal communication. He does not know what his expression resembles, but he forgets to be afraid, too thrilled with himself and his little discovery.

“Oh, fun. White hair big, old loner, two very very scary-looking swords.” One silver for monsters, one steel for men. Jaskier knows the stories, and knows the ones that have particularly spoken of the second sword’s use. Blood spilled on the streets of Blaviken. Brutalities committed in broad daylight in the eyes of an entire village. Well. Most stories are bullshit and most storytellers are liars, so Jaskier does not run just yet.

“I know who you are.” He congratulates himself on his sense of drama.The witcher moves immediately, and the abrupt levity in his very dangerous man-murdering limbs should trigger some righteous self-preserving fear in Jaskier, but the bard’s gaze lingers on the grace of the witcher’s exit. Among other things. Collecting himself, he jumps to his feet and gives chase. 

“You're the Witcher, Geralt of Rivia.” 

“Called it.” Heads turn, a paralysed sort of hush filtering into the previously rowdy tavern like the first snow of winter settling soft as a dove on a ruinous battlefield to shield the world from the horrors committed on the surface of the earth. It is awful and stilted, even with the way harsh whispers break out all over in little pockets of community. Guilt pours cold water on the heat of his face. Somehow, Jaskier does not believe the Butcher of Blaviken is a heartless monster. Not with the unnerved expression that had flown to the witcher’s face briefly. 

“Called… it.” Jaskier repeats weakly. The smell of acid fades and Jaskier chases it.

If nothing else, he will get a good song out of the ordeal.

_You don’t deserve the air you breathe. Everything you touch you destroy._

_Do you know anyone that would choose to leave their home?_

_Does it live up to the stories you humans tell?_

_‘The Great Cleansing’, humans called it. ...I called it digging a mass grave for everyone I loved._

_Do you like my palace?_

_Is history a wheel_

_Doomed to repeat?_

Jaskier is a liar.

It is about dignity, Jaskier thinks, mind conjuring the phantom sensation of the heel of a hand being driven to his face and sweet, soothing words dribbling into his ears and filling his mind with white noise. Kingdoms will come and go- the silver of towers no more immortal than a mountain faced with the cutting determination of an ocean with too much time to spare. Everything is transient and fleeting. Elves die. Humans die. Everyone dies. Even Jaskier, for all his pomp and colour, will be bleached by death and slip through the annals of history once he passes, and any future representation of him will never be truly accurate. Jaskier, and every aspect of his being and personality, is finite and will cease to exist. The stories, on the other hand, last forever, woven into reality by words or picture, and there will always be a lingering piece of Jaskier’s soul left behind in the tales he has worked into existence; someone will eventually hear a ballad or song and glimpse a facet of Jaskier like a trick of light in the mirror.

So he reviews what he knows. He rewrites reality.

The elves are driven to the edge of the world, one foot hanging off and most of them are ready to leap or blindly bound backwards into the filth of humanity where their backs and innards will be shredded by swords and magic they had made the mistake of passing on. They sleep in hovels and caves, eat dust and the ash of their hubris- for had there not been an arrogance in believing the ones you train and teach will not turn on you by plunging silver daggers into your spine with a grace you taught and trained in them? Unprepared for it because you simply believed you were above death itself? People- humans, elves, were all the same. Killable. There was no dignity in being mortal, being dust discarded by destiny at the end of a long journey.

The memory of the elves would have dignity. Golden, nigh untouchable and snobby, exactly like they deserved. Not to be treated like centipedes ground into the dirt by monsters and liars. Liars like Jaskier, who can give nothing except for the pretense of dignity through the facade of a lie. If elves will be remembered as charismatic but xenophobic lords with the devil itself at their disposal, so be it. Jaskier can only help one person at a time, and he has a feeling he will not be able to repeat ballads of human atrocity to unwilling ears before he is silenced, throat and tongue cut. People so rarely hear what they refuse to, and Jaskier has learnt that everyone has a wild thing in their bones that howled and emerged to rend and tear from time to time. So lies made better stories.

“Respect doesn’t make history.” Jaskier tells Geralt like it is a secret, voice low and unhappy. There is a frustrated blackness in Geralt’s answering frown that makes Jaskier feel older than the ageless witcher by his side. Jaskier smiles, exhausted, and leaves. 

Dignity lasts forever.

 _Fuck_ dignity. 

“Your devil has been vanquished.” He utters once he darkens the doorstep of the bar he had previously been so pitilessly tormented in. His gait displays every ache he has accumulated that drains him, stumbling like a drunkard whose poison has been adrenaline instead of ale. Wordlessly, a barmaid passes him a drink. He tries to smile at her in gratitude, but instead droops into an available chair at an empty table and blacks out for half an hour until a splinter finds a home in his cheek.

He growls at his own appearance in the window, ridiculously unkempt and bedraggled for a journey that had been barely two days long. Geralt had looked fine, too, even after being beaten and spat on. 

“I guess I’m just talented.” He mumbles, digging a fingernail into his cheek to scratch out the wooden chip there. “So very talented at being dignified.” Fuck dignity. He will sleep with the next person who bats their eyelashes.

“Evening, fine minstrel.”

His deliverance comes in the form of the alderman’s daughter.

She slides neatly into his dusty lap with an easy grace Jaskier is immediately envious of, knowing he could have used that kind of skill with seduction in the past. Her hair is platinum and straight, tucked behind her ears to frame her strong chin, which he gets a good view of while she stretches her spine to tower over him. Jaskier smiles, lifting a finger to move a strand of pale hair out of her face. Her eyes are dark. He cannot work out why that bothers him.

“Good evening, fair lady. I believe we met earlier this week.” He puts on a charming grin over the cracks his recent adventure has cast into his identity. “Am I mistaken?”

“You’re not.” Her voice is so saccharine sweet it burns his tongue like melted sugar. “What happened to your witcher?”

 _His_ witcher. Jaskier likes that. But. He tries to catch her eye, to peer into their murky depths to establish her benevolence. What trouble the witcher gets into is technically no business of his, but he had seen the smoldering glare Geralt had given his purse days ago. “Why would a fine young woman such as yourself be so interested in him? He left town ages ago.”

“I have no interest in the Butcher of Blaviken, bard.” She pulls away, eyes rolling. Her sweetness thins and returns in full force. “I am more interested in whether his bard has any commitments that may take up his time this evening.”

“Ah.” Her hand is high on his thigh. Jaskier swallows rapidly, clearing his throat to ensure his voice does not jump an octave or two. “No. That is- I’m… free.”

She smiles like a predator.

She is married. Jaskier finds out when he is thrust against the wall by her husband who brandishes a knife in his face. It is the first death threat he receives for fucking the wrong person. It is far from the last. 

She digs her nails into the cracks in his heart that Valdo had left there and pushes, because, fuck, he had really liked her, liked her bold sultry little voice that ticked his throat and her doe eyes that shone like pools of the night sky. He had really liked her, did like her, even if she had just been using him for stress relief or to get back at her husband. Maybe her cheating would improve their relationship. Her husband had not been angry at her, afterall, so maybe he would start appreciating her lovely hair and dark eyes, and Jaskier will just be a little insignificant bump in the road in the long run of their marriage.

“Bloody hurts right now, though.” Jaskier tells the leaves of tree he has managed to climb onto to escape. The bark bites his cheek in agreement. “I guess I am just talented at getting into these situations.”

Approximately two months and three new songs later, Jaskier is not-so-inconspicuously browsing the wares of an apothecary, counting and touching every glittering glass bottle in the darkness, earning much ire from a fellow shopper who has taken to glaring at him from behind the shelves when his back is turned, when a rabble of extremely nervous bandits steals his attention faster than the other shopper- _oh, shoplifter, they have slipped an opaque brown container under their cloak-_ disappears at the merest scent of trouble. Jaskier is lacking in self preservation enough to seek trouble like it is his only salvation to the brain numbing ennui of his monotonous existence and scrambles into the street to eavesdrop on a band of dangerous men who all have knives strapped to their hips, managing to walk into a lovely, firm chest that is covered with all manners of uncomfortably studded armour. The eye-watering sting of its sharp, chemical smell is monumentally smothered by the sheer unbridled happiness Jaskier feels warming the tips of his ears. Hands with fingers like metal bands shove him backwards violently out of instinct, which is fortunate because Jaskier is three seconds away from doing something embarrassing like _hugging_ the witcher.

“I had thought they were talking about you! It is good to see your dour face again, dear.” The witcher’s yellow eyes blink at his beaming smile, before they follow Jaskier’s nod to where the merry band of bandits are walking and narrow.

“Those are bandits.” The witcher informs him, head tilted like he is listening to another conversation. Jaskier finds it tremendously endearing that he can do that. 

“Yes, I know.”

“You chased after an armed gang of bandits.” 

“Are you in the habit of repeating obvious facts, dear witcher?”

The witcher sighs and rolls his eyes like _Jaskier_ is the one who is behaving strangely. “You have no sense at all.”

Jaskier gasps in mock offense, heart already traitorously thudding in delight at the dry humour of a man he has only met once before. He cannot help himself, he cannot believe anyone could ever have the misconception that witchers are serious people who do not have emotions and the like. Geralt is a joy to be around. Jaskier will fight anyone who dares breathe otherwise within his hearing range. “You are exceedingly rude!” He teases, suddenly feeling short of breath with the hysteria that is bubbling in his throat. 

“Hmm.” The witcher replies, which Jaskier translates as _spare me your histrionics, bard_. Geralt’s expression is dead but he makes no move to step away from where he is within arms reach of Jaskier and step out of the little space they have carved out for themselves in the busy street. Jaskier feels at home in this corner of the world- just him and the scary witcher he has had the luck to run into again. Destiny must have forgiven his drunken ditty of slurred profanities he had composed the day he walked into Posada. Or something else has lured Geralt to this forgettable backwater town.

“Are you stalking me?” Jaskier exclaims loudly with no warning whatsoever, to the horror and mortification of three merchants on either side of them who are suddenly overly invested with the floor or fiddling with their hands. His tactlessness is rewarded with a growl from his companion, who appears to decide that it would be best to steer clear of the crazy bard afterall and has started to stomp out of the marketplace in a flurry of steel and leather. Jaskier inspects the witcher’s shuttered expression and realises he has made a critical error. He runs to catch up, mildly noting the amusing reactions of the marketplace goers who dive out of his way like he is a rabid animal. “I was kidding, I didn’t mean to imply you would ever do such a thing! I don’t actually think you would- oof, sorry love…”

“Not that I wouldn’t be flattered if you were stalking me! It is probably a good idea to keep track of your barker anyway, and you should be keeping me up to date with your grandiose exploits so that I may pen down the heroics of the white wolf of Rivia before I collapse when I run out of lung capacity because _you’re not stopping_ -”

The witcher halts and Jaskier skids to close the distance between them and copies his silence. He opens his mouth to continue once he has caught his breath and finds a palm fixed around his jaw and lips. His eyes widen.

“Stop. Talking.” The hand is removed.

Jaskier considers that the witcher could kill him without sparing a thought.

“...shan’t.” 

The witcher’s eye twitches but other than a spasm of his lips like he is trying not to smile, his expression divulges nothing. Jaskier is grinning, and he is just so very drunkenly happy to see the witcher again that it takes a few tries to force his feet to follow the witcher’s when Geralt makes a beeline for the stables. “Do you have a contract?”

The witcher inclines his head. Jaskier is thrilled, until the witcher says, “You’re not coming with me.”

The bard, who had hands scrabbling to grab his lute from his back and had been two seconds away from singing unprompted, glares. “I beg your pardon? How am I going to write any songs about your monster slaying if I don’t see any monster slaying?”

“Hmm.”

“I _am_ going to write about your monster slaying. That is non-negotiable. You can’t stop me.” 

“Hm.” The witcher refutes by mounting his horse and raising an eyebrow, as if in challenge. 

“You shouldn’t have done that. My willpower and spite allows me to do many things.” Including, it seems, keep pace alongside a witcher on a horse for over half an hour, although he is panting when he catches up to the witcher who apparently has no sympathy for the poor, meagre human bards lacking strength and stamina enhancements. Jaskier tries not to throw up into a bush. Ah, fuck it, they are far away enough from the village and off the road. “Did you tell me what we were hunting? I- I feel like you didn’t tell me.”

“Fae.” It takes considerable willpower to stop the instinctual freeze with the noise of every alarm bell suddenly clamouring in his head. _Fae_ . Hunting _faeries_. Just Jaskier’s luck. 

Sweat beads at an unnaturally fast rate with the anxiety that nearly cracks his voice. He laughs to dampen it. “Fae. Faeries? Those little bitty butterfly people who snort glowing powder?”

“Watch what you say.” Geralt grunts. He sniffs the air and absentmindedly notes, “You’re afraid.”

“Can smell that, can you?” Jaskier props a hand on his hip and watches the witcher dismount gracefully. He breathes in, his own nose only catching petrichor and an earthy smell. “Yes, I am just terrified of teeny little rabbit-sized creatures with wings that can’t fly in the rain.”

“Faeries can be big.” Jaskier chokes on a peal of hysterical laughter. _Faeries can be big, Melitele’s tits._

“But they do have butterfly wings and a drug problem?” The bard wonders out loud just to be a nuisance.

“No.” Geralt starts looking around, careful not to tear apart shrubbery with his impressive strength. His armour catches in a bush, thorns leaving little white scratches on the leather. “Fuck.”

Jaskier watches him take off his armour with a very dry mouth and wide eyes. “Y- you’re ruining my fun. And the ditty I was halfway- Why are you taking off your armour? Do you not need it for killing faeries?”

“Later.”

“And what do we do in the meantime- wait around for the faerie to curse us? You know, I’ve always wanted to be cursed with a sex spell, just for the _enriching_ experience-”

“The faerie has killed six people already.” Geralt stacks the armour pieces in a little pile. His shirt underneath is soaking wet and clinging to his skin, which _almost_ distracts Jaskier from the fact that _six people had already been killed, what the fuck._ His skin feels tight, stretched over his bones too tautly.

“Oh.” How quaint. A murdering faerie in the forest, and Jaskier is in their range of murder, mortal and too soft to do any real damage. He licks his lips. “How will you kill it?”

“Steel.” The blade gleams like fire in the sunlight, singing with power that Jaskier finds himself shying from unconsciously. Geralt sheathes it without looking at him. “Silver won’t work on faeries, but steel has enough iron to hurt.”

Jaskier nods. Geralt removes his shirt.

“What the fuck.” Jaskier whispers hoarsely. “Are you trying to distract me? It’s working very well, congratulations, although I rather-”

A fire springs to life from the witcher’s outstretched palm, silencing the rambling pouring from his lips. The light illuminates the canvas of skin on Geralt, patterned with years upon years of fighting and bravery, each raised skin or silvery line a testament to survival and to the capability of the man. Jaskier shuts up, and just _looks._

One scar spans the entirety of his back in a diagonal slash, the edges ripped and uneven.

Jaskier moistens his lips. The voice that escapes him is unnatural. “How-”

“Werewolf.” Geralt wrings the shirt next to Jaskier, who still tracks every muscle rippling behind the scarred skin of the very, very gorgeous man, interspersing the filth bouncing in his skull with timid questions that he is only just listening to for answers.

“And the one below-” Geralt wrinkles his nose like he can smell something Jaskier cannot, and starts putting on his clothes again, only slightly drier than before. The bard shakes his head vigorously to disperse the last vestiges of lust that addles his mind. This is an important conversation. He should be paying attention. “The one just below your shoulder?”

“Harpy.” Jaskier sighs, frustration tinged with annoyance rather than lust. He produces his journal from inside his doublet, making a note of the creature next to tens of lines of tidbits he had managed to research over the course of two months and two minutes of sullied conversation. He settles on a plane of flat rock and poises his hand to write.

“Any particular elaboration you would like to add on?” He asks drily, considering whether the smirk that flits across the witcher’s face could be considered _shit-eating_.

“Hmm.” The witcher says. “No.” 

Jaskier puts the notebook away in a fit of exasperation. The witcher looks like he is going to laugh, although it is difficult to tell. Maybe he is constipated. Has Geralt been messing with him all this time?

In petty retaliation, Jaskier states with an air of conviction, “I am going to write a song about your scars.”

“No.”

“Why not? I am your barker, and these humanise you to the masses, Geralt. I don’t think you need reminding of how badly your reputation needs a boost.” Jaskier barely blinks at the glower that is sent his way, fixating on the warmth in the yellow ring around the witcher’s pupils. He tucks his belongings into his pockets. “Well?”

The witcher sighs. “Humans are easily… distressed.”

The bard snorts.

“Oh no! Distressed!” Jaskier squeaks fitfully, pointedly staring at where he knows there is a particularly grisly starburst of scars like something with thorns had been forced through the flesh. He reclines backwards off his stone platform, pressing a hand to his forehead. “Oh, you’re distressing me!”

“Shut up.” The bard grins into the wet grass tickling his nostrils.

“Harsh, your cruelty inflicts such scars upon my heart… I cannot recover.” He props his feet on the rock and tries to look at Geralt in the face. “I shall forever be trapped in your disapprov-”

The witcher hisses, eyes wild and dilated. Jaskier exhales shakily in awe at the way he scents the air and growls. “I’m serious, bard. Shut up.”

Something moves in the bushes.

“Shutting up!” Jaskier yelps and sits up to scans the foliage not even a metre away, heart pounding. “Shutting… up! Now.”

“ _Jaskier._ ” The bard yelps at the whisper right into his ear, dropping his lute with exaggerated gentleness. Geralt rolls his eyes and looks like he is regretting that he had not protested harder when Jaskier told him he was going to follow the witcher around. “Jaskier, calm down.”

“You know my name! Did I tell you my name? This is- oh yes, quiet, don’t hit me-” Dodging the fist towards his back, the bard gets to his feet next to the witcher and they both survey the mass of leaves and twigs the shuffling sound had arisen from. Geralt twists the entire bush aside with a snapping of stems and roots swiftly, startling Jaskier. “What the- Oh sweet gods and goddesses, that is a secret clearing behind a bush; I have read this kind of story before and I do not like it one bit-”

“Jaskier. I need you to go ahead.” The bard gawks.

“You. Want me to go ahead. Into the dark scary clearing you just warned me might be hiding a monster.”

“Yes.” Geralt pulls out his steel sword. Jaskier wonders if it is supposed to be a threat.

“Just to clarify-”

“ _Jaskier_.”

Everything has gotten ominously quiet. Jaskier shrugs carelessly. “Yes alright, it's not like I have anything to live for anyway.”

His mother had warned him about doing the bidding of pretty men, had she not? He has gotten a foot into the opening in the foliage when the witcher grabs his hand and nudges a dagger into it. “And I need you to distract it.”

“But-” The dagger is small but heavy in his hands, and so unlike the prettily ornate silver ones the bard is used to- the ones with carved handles and jewels that clack uselessly against armour in a fight. Jaskier is careful not to touch the iron blade with his fingers. “You want me to be bait?”

“You’ll be fine. Faeries like to play. It’s probably toying with its victims before it guts them.”

The bard rolls his eyes. “Oh, that is so reassuring.”

“Just do it.”

“I am!” His feet move of their own accord, sending him into the clearing with a few aborted stepping motions and minimal tripping. The canopy leeches light from ever reaching the stunted grass, and in its place tenacious weeds with thorns and roots that slip their loops around his feet like little nooses where every stumble is a death sentence straight into the mouth of some horrible, beastly-

There is no cackling fae creature in the clearing, only a mass of oily black with too many eyes.

Jaskier stops walking.

“Geralt? T- that’s no faerie.” At the stutter, the witcher steps into the clearing, sword drawn and eyes glowing like some hero out of a thirteen hour long epic. His entire body is tense and his walk could be described as prowling, like a fantastical creature of myth stalking forward to go in for the kill. He is the archetype of a witcher from stories- dangerous and powerful. And hot as hell when the light in the opening of the bushes cascades of his cheekbones. 

“Ah fuck.” Jaskier jerks in shock,dragging his eyes away back to the definitely-not-a-faerie in askance.

“‘Ah fuck’? What do you mean, ‘Ah fuck’?” The monster howls bone-chillingly. Jaskier yelps as the thing starts moving, a formless shape of darkness and too many limbs. “Geralt! Geralt for fuck’s-”

The witcher hauls him by the arm backwards until he is protected by the man’s bulk. “You were supposed to distract it!”

Jaskier wails over the creature. “Distract a faerie! Not whatever the fuck that sprite is! And stop yelling at me or I will file for a divorce, you cur!”

“Stop spewing bullshit and stab it in the eye!” 

“But it’s way over there!” Jaskier whines. The witcher evidently agrees, for he stops roaring unreasonable imperatives and seems to consider the distance between them and the creature.

The witcher decides, “I am going to throw you.”

“You absolute tease.” The bard whimpers, seconds before the witcher grabs his waist, leaving Jaskier a scant few seconds to appreciate the way the witcher’s palms fit perfectly above his hips before he is bodily dragged to a leather-clad torso and pressed tightly there. Jaskier opens his mouth and closes it again. The witcher does not even look at him, pulling the bard even closer and frowning as if in concentration.

Jaskier’s only warning is the way every muscle in the witcher’s arms coil beneath the skin like springs in preparation. He opens his mouth even though he does not know what to say. His entire self is slung to the side, hips nearly reaching the ground as the witcher builds momentum to throw. 

Jaskier just sighs. And is flung face-first into leathery hide, whimpering at the thought of the creature’s oily surface clogging his pores. He comically unsticks his skin from the stunned creature.

The monster is much more unpleasant up close, especially in terms of scent. 

“You pissant- oh fuck! I didn’t think you were serious! You knew I didn’t think you were serious! This is domestic abuse, I’ll have you know! We’re getting divorced and there’s no way arou-” A ring of quicksilver flicks to him and watches him put in some distance from its side. “Oh, ha, hello there!”

“ _You’re suicidally stupid._ ” The creature giggles, sounding like a thousand different voices at once harmonising and colliding in ear-bleeding dissonance. Jaskier stops breathing momentarily when his limbs stop functioning.

“Bloody rude!” Jaskier gasps at last, heart thudding almost painfully with the proximity the painfully huge silver eyes are in relation to his face. Geralt nearly falters in his stealthy stalking forward, giving the bard a weird look, who takes it as his cue to stab the monster in the eye with a flurried twist of wrist that sends the blade hilt-deep into the thing. The answering roar rattles his bones, freezing his blood.

 _Move. Move, move move!_ His brain screams, and his feet follow slowly, scrambling back until he can see the outline of the creature. It opens mouths, plural, and they reach for Jaskier with their emptiness. Panic claws at his throat; every breath feels like breathing fire and ice at the same time. _Keep moving._

The creature shrieks, the sound vibrating and etching the inside of his skull like fingernails on slate, loud and melancholic and utterly furious. Jaskier can see the thing in his mind’s eye, hulking like a great dragon with none of the ethereal grace or sanity but black and dripping from a thousand gaping mouths with teeth that look like wounds stained with rust and tainted with infection. It is still reaching towards him, with its consciousness, with its claws and wings like dusty moths carved with the staring patterns of eyes. “ _I can see you!_ ”

His eyes are closed. When did he close them?

He trips on a root, and his hands shoot out automatically to break his fall, eyes opening at last to see the muted grey-green of the weeds in front of his face, unsaturated like the colour had been drained out deliberately. Fuck, fuck, where was Geralt? Jaskier cannot hear anything over the _screaming_ in his head and the staccato of his lungs working which sound like enormous bellows heaving. Where was- Where?.

There is a crack, a cunch like broken bones and glass that resounds for seconds, or maybe it is hours, and then everything is so silent except for Jaskier’s heartbeat is loud in his ears.

His tongue tastes like iron. He spits out the blood.

“Geralt?” Jaskier gets up and looks around. His palms glitter with rubies brought to his skin by the friction of his fall. “Geralt!”

The witcher has indeed slain the monster, as is his norm. What is decidedly not the norm, is that the monster has shrunk from an all-encompassing presence of otherworldly horror that had eaten all the space in the clearing to a shrivelled creature with too many orifices and wings, barely bigger than a horse. It lays at the witcher’s feet, the steel point of his sword driven into an eye- at which point Jaskier realises that the creature is vaguely anthropomorphic in death, and could be mistaken for a human silhouette if it were dark and one squints. It has a head and four- excluding the wings- limbs and everything. It smells like iron, and the end of the sword in contact with the mauve hued creature flesh burns red like the metal has been freshly pulled out of a forge.

“Hmm.” The witcher looks uncertain as to whether he should touch his sword. At Jaskier’s approach, he pulls it out and glances back at the bard, something glinting in his eyes Jaskier might describe as nervousness. “Bard. I would not have let you come if I knew you would be in danger.”

Jaskier laughs weakly, wiping his bloody palms on his ripped pant leg. “Back to _bard_ , are we? I thought we had progressed to _Jaskier_.”

“Hm.” The witcher’s yellow eyes are glued to the tremor in his hands. Jaskier shakes them vigorously, clearing his throat and swallowing more blood by accident.

“So. You know what that thing is? Cause it’s not any faerie I’ve seen. Heard of, I mean. In stories.”

Geralt’s eyes are embers in the darkness. “It is. It’s some kind of fae spirit creature, not of this world. You can smell the iron.”

And he slices off its head.

“That’s awful, disgusting and will haunt my nightmares forever-” Jaskier laments automatically without any real feeling other than the instinctual inner wince at the squelching sound of fetid flesh tearing, but the witcher’s meaty shoulders clam up and he tries to hide the head like he had forgotten Jaskier was present, as if Jaskier is going to forget that Geralt is holding some monster’s decapitated head just because he cannot see it. Gods forbid the witcher try to put it in Roach’s saddlebags. “Please don’t put it in Roach’s saddlebags, she doesn’t deserve that. For Melitele’s sake, I will even carry it for you.” 

Geralt’s gaze is contemplative enough that Jaskier starts to regret offering. Fortunately, he starts walking back to Roach without asking Jaskier to ruin his clothes further. Jaskier praises the gods and sprints after him, legs still numb from adrenaline. “Are you going back to town to collect the reward?”

The witcher nods. Jaskier smiles, blood on his teeth. “Brilliant.”

Silence is usually suffocating for Jaskier but the one that reigns when the witcher and the bard walk back to town is pleasantly soothing on his frayed nerves, like a balm. Until Jaskier breaks it. “I was thinking about what I said earlier, about the stalking and the keeping track of the person who is essentially acting as your human-witcher liaison…”

Geralt’s eyebrows raise. Jaskier flushes but keeps talking even though his tongue is contused and twisted. “Maybe, we should probably- what I mean-”

He takes a deep breath. “Let me come with you. On your adventures. Contracts. Whatever. _Please._ I swear I can be helpful and it is winter soon, so you might need an extra pair of hands-”

“Bard.” Bard, not Jaskier. That in itself is an answer, one that makes his throat tight with embarrassment and shame. Fuck, what is he saying? They barely know each other. Two near death experiences does not make a friendship. He opens his mouth to apologise, or something, but he is cut off again.

“I spend my winters at Kaer Morhen.” _It’s not personal_ , he means. And Jaskier is still depressed, but he _does_ feel better about himself.

“Oh.” 

“Hmm.” Geralt’s eyes crinkle.

Jaskier smiles hopefully despite his intentions not to, a silly little thing that feels like sunshine and dew drops on dandelions. “You want me to travel with you, then? After winter?”

“Want is a strong word.” Geralt says wryly but Jaskier is already giddy with delight, low and warm in his stomach at how the witcher’s eyes sparkle. He turns the full force of his beaming face to his witcher like a flower to the sun, so brilliantly happy that the man actually looks shocked, the muscles of his jaw slackening without gawking outright. “Um.” 

Jaskier starts gushing. “I would be honoured, I’ll not be any trouble. You’ll barely notice I’m around unless you want to-”

“Um. Ba- Jaskier.” 

“Yes, my darling witcher?” The witcher looks as constipated as ever.

“You. You can write the song. About the scars. If you want to.”

“You-!” Jaskier sputters as his cheeks burst into colour, so surprised that he walks into a tree and nearly breaks his precious darling lute. The witcher chuckles and Jaskier has never heard a lovelier sound. “You would-”

He runs and hugs the witcher. Geralt drops the monster head, which Jaskier quite frankly had forgotten even existed, and stiffens like he thinks the bard is attacking him. The angle is a little awkward; Jaskier is not quite Geralts’s height although he is sure time will even out the difference, but the witcher does not seem to know what to do with his hands when a clingy bard is attached to his front. The bard giggles into his witcher’s armour when broad, sticky palms come to a stilted rest on his shoulders. “You’re leaving inchor-y handprints on my new doublet, aren’t you?”

“Fuck.” The man mutters.

Jaskier is certain he will be still grinning widely like an idiot until his face hurts hours later. “See you around then, Geralt.”

“See you after winter, Jaskier.” Letting go of his witcher seems like an impossible task when he is enveloped in warmth and the smell of acid, more homely than any place he has ever rested his head or heart. The smile slips off his face to tumble next to the decapitated monster head.

“Yeah.” He mumbles. “After winter.”

Jaskier lets go.

_“I miss the roads I once walked_

_My auburn palace forests with golden floors_

_The humid summer air enchanting I_

_Our laughter filling the moors_

_My hand clasped tightly in yours_

_Oh, you seek and you shall find_

_The sapphire heavens you sang beneath_

_Are the very ones I await under_

_The day you flee winter’s teeth_

_And thrust the world in sharp relief-_ fuck! _”_

Jaskier is mid-verse into his fourth song about young lovers separated by the seasons before he stops discordantly and stares blankly at the tavern patrons, who pause their revelry and drink to holler at him.

 _Where the actual fuck_ had that song come from?

Oh.

Oh _fuck. Bloody buggering fuck._

_Falling in love with Geralt of Rivia, of all the fucking people in the world._

Jaskier briskly contemplates wailing to the high heavens that his heart will never recover from the fissures that have split the edges of his person and he will never love another soul like he loves Geralt, but that would not be fair because he knows love is fleeting he will be in love with someone else by the end of the week. Yes. Impermanence is etched in the wild bird of his heart. He will get over it. No worries. No need to fret.

Within the week, he meets a young lady a few years younger than he who is being married off to a lord thrice her age on her betrothal day and listens to her weep appallingly into his shirt, her morose backstory threading sympathy into his chest. He proceeds to make her exceedingly late for her betrothal feast and is chased out of town with threats of pitchforks and swords when her reason for delay is brought to light. Which is a bit of a shame because he had really liked her and adored the way her unusually low and husky voice had been distinguishably happier after he had sung a few ballads and listened to her woes. At her smile, he had developed butterflies and twisted intestines, all symptoms of a possible blossoming of something beyond a quick stress reliever. Alas, she had not felt the same, doing the impolite equivalent of chiming ‘no thanks’ and shoving his fractionated heart back into his hands.

Love is gut wrenching sufferance and Jaskier is addicted to the feel of it, the sensation of dying and living all at once, the adrenaline that surges under his skin and prickles. It makes him lose his head, abandon all reason and logic- but he loves it. Falling in love is the best thing that happens to him, every time. Even if love is not permanent, he has loved every single one of his lovers with every fibre of his being, letting them pluck pieces of his heart with slender fingers and let himself count the scars afterwards like he is putting pressure on bruises to remember how he got them. Even the heartbreak afterwards is one of the only constants in his life. Heartache is his default state. It has been his muse for longer than Geralt has. It whispers into his ear, vengeful, lonely and desperate when his quill presses against paper. It lets him hold onto his lovers like a dying man holds onto water that drips from between his fingers. It is a pleasure, a blessing, a curse, an overreaction and a way of life.

It hurts. And Jaskier does it again the next town over when a pretty maiden blushes shrilly and presses a daisy into his palms. He tells her he loves her a week later, not a falsehood on his lips, and she kicks him out of bed. It hurts again and he writes a new song.

He spies the brilliantly white and silver hair of his witcher a fortnight after his heartbreak, and promptly forgets that he had been singing his new ‘One Pressed Daisy’ with a fervour he hated himself for in the exact same tavern minutes ago.

Jaskier emulates a certain alderman’s daughter from Posada and sidles into Geralt’s lap with practiced ease, nearly moaning at the comfortable heat of his witcher beneath his thighs, separated by only fabric and leather. He lifts his arms to rest on meaty shoulders and brushes his lips on his witcher’s ear, letting his breath hitch and release in a rhythmic staccato. “Does someone of your… caliber come here often, darling? Or are you following me?”

Geralt stares blankly for a moment, canting his head to the side in recognition and lifts Jaskier with arousing ease off his lap. For a precious moment, Jaskier flails and squawks as he is supported only by two hands secured around his waist that deposit him ungracefully in a tangle of limbs on the floor. He lies at his witcher’s feet, sneezing at the dust and grime and throws his head back to shriek with laughter, back arching off the floor. 

Geralt’s eyes crinkle at the corner.

Jaskier has never seen anything more beautiful.

 _Oh. I still love you._ Jaskier smiles. _Should have seen that one coming._

Still, love is as quick and forceful as a fuck with a nobleman who is deathly afraid of his wife catching him in bed with someone else. It comes and plays, not necessarily in a bed or in a particularly romantic location but it leaves just when his heart is full and wanting, at the very moment Jaskier thinks himself incapable of loving anyone as much, it goes away just to prove him wrong, just for a bit, just so his heart takes more damage than it should. 

_I am going to let you trample on my heart,_ Jaskier tells Geralt telepathically as his witcher helps him to his feet. _I wonder how long this will last. A few months. Less than a year if I’m lucky._

“So can I sit in your lap?”

“No.” His witcher lets him sit on the table instead. Jaskier pouts but stands on it and sings increasingly ridiculous improvised renditions of ‘Toss a Coin to your Witcher’ until Geralt is grinning in the way of his where his mouth does not move but his eyes sparkle like citrines from a mine. Something constricts his heart like a hand gripping tightly and Jaskier starts to hope.

Jaskier only realises he has miscalculated after the fifth love song he writes. Geralt stares in slight horror but mostly confused resignation as the bard smacks himself midway through a conversation that Jaskier is too distracted to pay attention to because he had been otherwise occupied with staring at the contours of his witcher’s face. 

They have been travelling together for nearly nine months. Geralt is speaking of leaving again for the winter, and Jaskier waves and sings his farewell in the tavern for all to see, trying not to feel like a maiden whose husband has gone off to war. His witcher’s eyes are points of gold in the dim lighting. Jaskier sings louder and shuts his eyes.

Geralt does not belong in Jaskier’s world of poetry and tragedy displayed like bottles on a shelf. Even if Jaskier would very much like to keep him.

He tells Geralt, he tells everyone that his muse is his witcher, but he is lying.

For all his rapture and enthrallment with his witcher, Jaskier’s muse has always been heartache since the very beginning.

  
  


_“-he can’t be bleat_

_Toss a coin to your witcher,_

_O’ Valley of plenty_

_O’ Valley of plenty-”_

A _boot_ , of all things, thumps the wall right beside his head. 

Jaskier snaps, because it is not the first time he has noticed the arseholes in the corner stirring trouble even though he has been in the tavern for two minutes at most. “Are you going to interrupt me every bloody four lines I sing?”

The fuckers laugh uproariously. The largest man rises from his seat with an ugly grin that flashes his stained teeth, jeering. “I’ll stop interrupting when you stop singing about a bloody murdering bastard, little bard!”

The rest of his party howls again like brainless morons they are, elbowing each other with their heavy tankards and spilling alcohol with every heavy-handed jab that renders them senseless with mirth again. Jaskier finds this phenomenon highly _interesting_ \- a feedback loop of stupidity where every action perpetuates their idiocy further. It physically pains him to watch, and he says as much, loudly as he props his lute against the wall.

The laughter stops.

“Are you tryna get yourself de-tongued, bard?” The other tavern patrons start sneaking out the doors and windows with drawn-out sighs of exasperation. Jaskier supposes that the group of men maiming other human beings is not a recent development. Their assholery is rooted deep. He studies the tankard next to his stool. Hefts it, weighs it. Sets it down.

He repeats the process with the stool but does not set it down.

The men are out of their chairs in the instant a stool barrels into their table and sheds splinters all over their clothing. Jaskier tries his best not to cackle at their dumbfounded expressions when the leader of their merry band of idiots paces over to him. “You’re going to regret that.”

Without being told, the other men surround him. A shove sends him stumbling into their leader.

Pinning Jaskier’s shoulders to his sides with an arm, the man grabs a dagger from his belt and holds the freezing metal to the bard’s vocal chords. A shroud of fear wraps chains around his throat and banishes his breaths but the wild thing in his bones just _laughs_ . Fear is useful. Fury far more so. Jaskier grips every inch of injustice and anger in his veins and sharpens it into something he can use. _Think. Think, think, think._

_Jaskier is a wild thing. Wild things bite._

He bites the man’s wrist, clamping his teeth so tight he hears bone scrape together. Then the man is screaming, cursing and trying to dislodge him, but Jaskier holds until he tastes iron and his tongue laps against broken skin. The dagger clatters on the moldy planks of the tavern and the bard slams his head backwards with a crunch of tissue and bone shattering, which finally stuns the man enough to loosen his hold on Jaskier’s shoulders, who dives to the floor while the man’s thugs simply watch on in horror and shock. The edge of the blade burns and slices his fingertips open when he closes his hand around it blindly. He pulls it to himself when he springs to his feet anyway, metal slippery and warm from kissing his skin. 

Jaskier clears his throat to be heard over the moaning of the man with the broken nose. “That was equally unpleasant for the both of us.” Especially the taste of sweat and grime.

One of the man’s thugs recovers enough to start shouting. “You… you fucking bit him!”

The bard rolls his eyes and uses the dagger to gesture at the injured drunkard. “He threatened to slit my throat first, I’ll remind you.”

“You’re- We’re not letting you-” Jaskier snickers as they pull themselves together enough to recall that they are a group of bulky henchmen facing off against a prissy musician with minimal common sense, whose worst crime really is the one against fashion with blood on his shirt. And maybe the damage to tavern property. Speaking of which- time to leave.

“Letting me? You’re not _letting_ me do _shit_. I’m going to go back to my dear witcher, and you’ll not stop me.” The step he takes forward is immediately blocked by an ugly leer which is not frightening other than its reminder that Jaskier is still a prissy musician behind the adrenaline and sass. “Ah, cock.”

The thug who had spoken first spits. “You’re going to be in so much trouble for this, bard.” 

Because these common thugs were such upstanding and moral citizens. Jaskier snorts derisively despite the sweat beading on his forehead. “Not as much trouble as your mother will have to-”

A fist catches his cheek from behind before the uncreative but classic insult passes his lips, sending him crashing back to the floor. His cheek throbs with the beginnings of a bruise that pisses him off to no end, because his face is his bloody moneymaker, and no lord, however backwater his hamlet may be, would pay for a bard that is not as pretty on the eyes as he is on the ears. The man who hit him was a coward and might have just cost Jaskier a few good meals. And he thinks _Geralt_ is a murderer, when it is Jaskier who is now contemplating severing the man’s head from his neck with a stolen knife in his tightly curled fist. 

Before any concrete plans are made, greasy fingers entangle in his hair and haul him upward with enough force to steal all the air from his lungs, to meet the bleary eyes of the idiot with the broken nose who cannot seem to fucking _stay down_. Foul breath gags the bard, which is probably the man’s intention with the way he dangles Jaskier painfully close to his horrendous teeth. “Are you going to sing if your tongue is cut, minstrel?”

“Yes. Definitely.” The man is crouching. His mistake. Jaskier rips his head from the embarrassingly weak hold on his hair and shoves himself on his arms to the man’s chest, pressing the length of his body to the man’s front. While the man twitches involuntarily and awkwardly brings his arms forwards to defend himself in an aborted motioning of limbs, Jaskier tucks his head to fall on the man’s shoulder in faux-intimacy, a mockery of a lover’s embrace that the man does not know how to react to. 

Jaskier cups his cheek from the side to tilt his wide eyes to the bard’s. “I am going to seduce your mother, make an honest woman of her, become your step-father and then disown you.”

The lout gapes like a fish. “What the fuck-”

Jaskier moves his wrist up, slipping the flat blade right along the man’s brow bone to find the tricky little vessel behind the eye and twists downwards, pulling his wrist back to his chest in a curving motion.

The eye lands in his lap. Jaskier sighs at the blood on his doublet and boots. 

“It appears my hand slipped.” The bard stands, and the thugs skitter out of the way of the skidding eyeball squeamishly. A head slumps at Jaskier’s feet when the moron, now short of an eye, faints, possibly from shock and blood loss. “Don’t be dramatic, what’s a little maiming between friends?”

Thunderous footsteps divert enough attention for Jaskier to wipe the blood off the knife discreetly through the unconscious man’s hair.

“What the fuck is going on here?” Blending into the darkness truly is his witcher’s favourite pastime. What had Geralt seen? “Jaskier, I was talking to the tavern keeper for less than ten minutes.”

“A lot can happen in ten minutes, and I am very talented, dear.” Geralt emerges from the dimness of the sideroom with aforementioned tavern keeper, who wrings his hands nervously and flinches at Jaskier’s reply. The mousy man frowns at the gory scene painted on his tavern floor and tuts furiously with anxious little clucks peppered in between like Jaskier is an errant child. 

“I- I’m not sure I can welcome you to stay if y- your bard is a danger to others.” The man stutters and snaps his fingers at an extremely resigned barmaid to clean up. Jaskier laughs. _The bard is a danger to others,_ he says. The tavern keeper reeks of prejudice, and Jaskier has accidentally handed him a reason to kick them out. Although if the idiot wants plausible deniability...

“T’wasn’t me. He fell on the knife. Directly on the eyeball. Terribly unlucky, that one.” He arranges his face into a picture of innocence. Geralt stares hard through his simpering as though he is trying to convey a telepathic message. 

“Jaskier.” His witcher spits out finally. “Let’s just leave.”

The bard’s lips flatten and quirk in an exaggerated pout. “But you have yet to sample the ale here, and there are such lovely rooms full of lice and-” 

“Just go and take your bloody singing whore with you, Blaviken Butcher!” A leftover thug yells, pointing at the door. Spittle flies and lands on his witcher’s boot.

Jaskier turns slowly to face the thug.

Butcher.

 _Butcher._ Fucking hell.

Jaskier has more people to stab. 

Geralt’s arms encircle his waist just as the bard lunges forward, dagger an inch away from dismembering the thug’s nose. He thrashes in his witcher’s grip like an eel wriggling to get free, kicking at unyielding muscles with a frenzy that is only mostly anger sprinkled with grief. “Let me go- Let me at him! I will cut out his tongue from his mouth since he knows not how to use it! I will- I swear I will! Let me go-”

The knife narrowly misses the thug’s face for the second time and the man finally gets a clue, retreating with a yelp of fear. At the sight of his target running, the fight drains out of Jaskier, leaving him to slump bonelessly and be lifted against his witcher’s hip as he makes his exit, like a mother would tuck a squirming toddler except that the bard is of Geralt’s height so they simply look ridiculous; a witcher holding another man who is folded at the waist and drooping towards the floor despite his ass in the air. Jaskier lets his head sag dangerously close to the ground.

“Butcher.” He whispers, tongue thick with feeling. The ground is not visible to him despite his face being turned in its direction. “He called you _Butcher._ ”

He has spent years fixing his beloved’s reputation to cleanly erase the blemish of ‘butcher’ from Geralt’s name, filling his witcher’s history with lovely stories that are somewhat true to ease into the ears of the masses and make everyone see Geralt the way Jaskier does- strong, brave, kind. Hot as _fuck_ . Years of repeatedly slamming _witchers have emotions_ and _Geralt is a good and noble man_ into deaf and mistrusting heads with the bare minimum amount of subtlety entire song cycles dedicated to one man’s heroism allows. Geralt is a wolf, a predator but so _good_ , and Jaskier’s heart aches in his love for the man. Fuck. Fuck anyone who dares imply Geralt is nothing like how Jaskier sees him, when it is Jaskier who has travelled, fought and nearly died beside his witcher, when it is Jaskier who has loved his witcher like he has never loved before. How dare they presume to know Geralt, or any witcher for that matter, better than Jaskier?

The dagger slips from his grasp. Geralt winces at the dust stirred by its fall.

Jaskier has disappointed him and the shame of it constricts his lungs. The bard lets his eyes and words sting. “Geralt of Rivia, don’t play the stoic and taciturn martyr. Aren’t you angry?” _At them, at me,_ are words not said.

His witcher drops him on his knees painfully as they pass the threshold of the tavern. “Is there a point?”

“Of course there is!” Jaskier cries, rolling onto his back so the other man can catch the sincerity on his face. Gods know what Geralt is thinking. “There will always be a point in being angry. You deserve to be angry.”

“Hm.” A disagreement. 

“Geralt!” The bard opens his mouth.

“Shut up.” Jaskier bristles but shuts up. “This isn’t one of your ballads and I am not a maiden in need of rescuing. Did you think you were defending my honour? Was that what the fight was?”

He sits up. “Yes! You’re certainly not doing it. Someone has to!”

“You can’t fight every person who decides I’m less than human.” That is what _he_ thinks.

Baring his teeth, Jaskier hisses, “I can bloody well try!”

Geralt crosses his arms over his chest. “No.”

Jaskier is a mature adult. He tries to kick the other man. “Yes!”

“Jaskier!” Geralt runs a hand through his hair and pulls away a few silvery strands. “ _Please_ stop fighting everyone who makes an off-hand remark about witchers.”

“It was not off-hand.”

“ _Jask._ ” The bard shivers. “We’re leaving. And you’ll stop stabbing random people in taverns.”

“Fine, I’ll charm them into liking you instead.” His conceding has nothing to do with the nickname he has been newly assigned and will wear like a badge of honour for the rest of his days. The last vestiges of his reluctance drip away at how his witcher relaxes incrementally. “Aw, you’re worried about me, aren’t you?”

“You’re not nearly as charming as you think you are.” Geralt says without answering his question and keeps walking like he has forgotten Jaskier is still lying on the ground like a garish decorative piece of carpet. The bard resents this.

“...I’m only letting that one slide because you’re stressed.”

Geralt is wrong about several things. For starters, they cannot leave yet because Jaskier has left his lute in the tavern. Secondly, the bard only stops stabbing people in front of his companion.

Also, Jaskier can and will be charming, even if it kills him.

  
  


_Destiny kisses at my neck_

_For my every seasonal refrain_

_Like my lover’s blades slicing vocal chords_

_Only tis’ without the pain_

_I will surrender once again_

_I swallow back my heart_

_It is a wyvern- fiery and untamed_

_But every patron gets sick of_

_My repetitive ballads all the same_

_Where every line is just your name._

  
  
  


He turns seduction, figuring out which aspect of himself is most appealing to his partners, into a goddamn _artform._

Jaskier is not a womanizer, nor a home wrecker. On purpose. He is a connoisseur of art, including the art work of a warm body sculpted by the gods and its dips and curves, and he is a musician who plays and presses on skin so his bedpartners can make such lovely tunes all night long. Jewels do not shine brighter than the starlight in a person’s eyes, and no perfume can compare to the scent of sex rolling off his partners in waves when they reach their peak and the sweat of their skin honeys his tongue. His introspection is shortened when he bites the silken inner flesh of his latest conquest’s thigh and her moan resounds as loud as the crash of the door when her husband walks in.

Jaskier has enough self awareness to realise his art appreciation has gotten a little out of hand.

This fact is introduced to him the third time he gets swiped by the edge of a knife as he is manoeuvring his torso through a window. His shoulder howls in pain and the roof of the small house groans protestingly in reply. Thank Melitele, the roof does not collapse under his weight though it is a near thing, and sleeping with a blacksmith’s wife is a terrible idea when one considers the sheer number of weaponry available on hand to stick into annoyingly mouthy bards who cannot keep it in their pants. This is a hypothesis Jaskier reminds himself not to test again.

“Write to me, darling!” He hollers at the blacksmith’s purple and bulging face filling the window, the poor man spitting mad and trying to align a crossbow bolt to the barrel amidst his wife’s jeering catcall. A spitfire, that one. So much initiative. He sprints faster as the bolt lodges itself a metre from his feet. “She’s probably not going to write to me.”

For a valid reason too at this rate; burying his desire for his witcher in other people does not usually endanger his life but it may cost him his anyway at the increasingly violent trend his bedpartners follow in ushering him out of their houses. One slipped shoe, one snapped neck… figuratively, given his current lack of footwear. His shoes will have to be replaced, as will his attire- it does not fit the decadence of the event he has been invited to perform at in a week. He hopes no cuckolded husband manages to get their grubby paws on his self at the event. He has done his rounds quite thoroughly here.

Hmm.

He will need a bodyguard.

Destiny favours him. Geralt of Rivia, the white wolf himself, is _in Cintra_.

Jaskier is once again eighteen and stupid, stepping into a tavern and looking for a story. Then Geralt is there, sucking all the air out of the room and out of Jaskier’s lungs and taking up all the space in his head. And nose. Melitele preserve him, are those monster entrails?

“Now, now, stop your boorish grunts of protest. It is one night bodyguarding your very best friend in the whole wide world. How hard could it be?” 

“I’m not your friend.” Geralt refutes, predictably. Jaskier rolls his eyes inwardly when he moves away from the bathtub..

“Oh. Oh, really? Oh, you usually just let strangers rub chamomile onto your lovely bottom?” Oh, and what a lovely bottom it is. Jaskier has composed a personal, filthy little sonnet dedicated to the suppleness of it and exactly what he would like to do with regards to said bottom. It is a private ditty, but a good one. Possibly his favourite. As if his witcher could hear his thoughts, Geralt turns to glare at him.

“Yeah, well, yeah, exactly. That’s what I thought.” Jaskier sets about looking for something mild to scent the water without giving his witcher a headache, trying not to smile. “Every lord, knight and twopenny king worth his salt will be at this betrothal. The Lioness of Cintra herself will sing the praises of Jaskier’s triumphant performance!”

With an expressive flourish, he flings his findings into the water and beams candidly.

“How many of these lords want to kill you?” Jaskier is glad their relationship has progressed far enough for this. He tries to put in effort to consider his witcher’s question but finds himself distracted by the naked form of his beloved, albeit not as much as he once would have been. Nothing to do with how attractive Geralt is, more to do with the trusting intimacy of their current situation- oh, how many lords _would_ want to kill him?

“Hard to say. One stops keeping count after a while. Wives, concubines, mothers sometimes.” Husbands and boytoys, too. Jaskier does not let that tidbit slip out, refocusing on the exasperated expression his witcher dons likes second nature as the bard perches on the edge of the tub. “Ooh, yeah, that face! Oh! Scary face! No lord in his right mind will come close if you’re standing next to me with a puss like that.”

Humans are bastards who judge things based on first impressions, no matter how adorably his witcher frowns. 

“Oh, on second thoughts… might wanna lay off the Cintran ale. A clear head would be best.” He pats a muscled shoulder and liberates the tankard his witcher makes an aborted motion reaching for. The glower he receives in return makes him smile. 

“I will not suffer tonight sober just because you hid your sausage in the wrong royal pantry.” Geralt says. Oh Melitele, a _metaphor_. Jaskier’s habits are rubbing off. “I’m not killing anyone. Not over the petty squabbles of men.”

The bard smirks. “Yes, yes, yes. You never get involved. Except you actually do, all of the time.”

If his witcher keeps scowling, his face will freeze that way. Jaskier is tempted to poke his cheek. “Uhg. Is this what happens when you get old? You get unbearably crotchety and cantankerous? Actually, I’ve always wanted to know, do witchers ever retire?”

“Yeah. When they slow and get killed.” Optimistic of him, thinking Jaskier will ever let death haul his muse away without significant kicking and screaming on his part that he is sure will ultimately will deter death itself. Geralt is stuck with Jaskier till the day he no longer defies entropy and succumbs to decay. Which Jaskier will not allow. Jaskier _refuses_. He cannot say that to his witcher’s face, however. 

“Come on, you must want something for yourself once all this… monster hunting nonsense is over with.”

“I want nothing.” _Not even me?_ There is a lump in Jaskier’s throat that chokes his words. He studies his nails, trying to gather himself.

He kneels and balances his weight onto his forearms on the edge of the tub. “Well, who knows? Maybe someone out there will want you.” 

_Like I do._

“I need no one. And the last thing I want is someone needing me.”

“And yet… here we are.” Jaskier breathes into the air Geralt’s eyes are heating, breathes the same air his witcher breathes, and feels like he is breathing molten gold. 

His heart is fucking pounding.

“Hmm.” Geralt replies. Jaskier sighs, shoulders loosening and stiffening again when his witcher glances behind him. Oh. “Where the fuck are my clothes, Jaskier?”

“Ah. Well, uh, they were sort of covered in selkiemore guts, so I sent them away to be washed. Anyway, you’re not going tonight as a witcher.”

Geralt growls in frustration, teeth bared like the wolf Jaskier wrote him to be, and the bard realises something is different, something is slightly off about the expression his witcher is making that niggles at the back of his mind. White glitters in his witcher’s mouth like stars in the dim light.

Then his mouth drops open in shock and realisation.

“Fangs!” Jaskier screeches, pointing. Geralt flinches and seals his lips very quickly, which is heartbreaking, but the forced neutral-uncertainty on his face is banished to annoyance when the bard lunges for his mouth and pries it open with his fingers, jumping straight into the tub of lukewarm water in the process. His clothes are waterlogged and ruined, but he barely notices as he straddles Geralt’s lap and peels the lips of a very confused witcher to the side so his fangs are displayed. He coos like he has been handed a baby instead of that he is sticking his hands into the mouth of someone who can and will maim him. “Hello, little teeth!”

“T’ fu-” Geralt mumbles around Jaskier’s fingers. The bard hisses at him to be silent as he drags the pads of his fingers on the eyeteeth, like the man has no right to interrupt his thrall. His witcher tries to bite down, irritation having completely displaced the doubts that Jaskier is anything as pedestrian as a coward who would be afraid of some pointy little teeth. “Jask-!”

“Have you been hiding this from me? Have you had fangs all this time?” Jaskier demands furiously, having the sense to remove his hands so his witcher can answer coherently. The thought that his witcher would ever shield any part of himself from Jaskier is terrible and the bard will have a talk with him about his self-esteem issues the next time some form of monster venom renders Geralt immobile but conscious enough to listen and possibly reply. “If you think I haven’t seen all of you… If you think there is anything on this plane of existence that will be able to make me think less of you-”

“Jaskier.” Bloody hell, that came out too honest. Geralt stares at him, and his skin itches at the way his witcher simply looks at him like he has not seen Jaskier in centuries. “Jaskier, get off me.”

“If you rearranged those words into a different order, we could be having sex right now.” He mumbles.

Geralt looks amused, but the charged little _moment_ from earlier has completely dissipated, so quick that Jaskier is getting whiplash. He clears his throat and pulls himself out of the water. “We’re not done with this conversation, witcher. You’re telling me all about your fangs after we get back from this betrothal. You’ll just stand in the corner while I enthrall the masses and there will be no unnecessary excitement. Then we’ll come back here and the real party will start.”

“I don’t like parties.”

“This one will be fine.”

  
  


What the fuck.

Pavetta somehow turns Duny back into a man and Jaskier remembers his mother saying _with love_ , like she had thought the idea was laughable. 

“Who’s laughing now?” He mutters. 

“Not Calanthe.” Offers the woman at his side. He remembers his manners, helping her to a seat that had mysteriously survived the princess’s wrath. 

“Thank you.” She raises her chin. “I am the Countess De Stael.”

Jaskier jerks and stares, slack-jawed. _Melitele’s tits_. “Oh. I may have heard of you.”

Countess De Stael is thankfully exactly the type of woman who takes what she wants and does not care for the nuances of social politics despite her high status. She is lovely, elegant, and nearly thirty years his senior. He cannot muster enough energy to give a damn about her age, only falling quickly for her lovely dark curls and glittering eyes that gleam with intelligence and wit. She is everything he needs in the moment.

Jaskier loves Geralt, obviously, but he also cannot help but be charmed by the countess’s tight grip encircling his wrists and her low, salacious voice that trickles into his ears and fills his mind with the sensation of wading through honey. His thoughts, the ugly, desperate ones that have crafted designs on his already tenuous relationship with his witcher slowly sink to the back of his head when she leans in with a bewitching smile that bares too many pearly teeth. His heart picks up to a hummingbird pace, thumping so fast it hurts and it is like he is falling in love for the first time again, hot blood singing in his veins the way his witcher’s sword sings when he fights. The Countess’s lips are ice at Jaskier’s throat, like a dagger pressed to his vocal chords, and Jaskier closes his eyes and falls in love again.

Jaskier is not an idiot, contrary to popular belief. He knows most of his bed partners do not love him, and Countess De Stael most definitely does not. Jaskier might toss his sorry heart around like a bottle of ale around a table, but he does not let the Countess’s sharp and greedy fingers take more of his heart than he is willing to give. And he can tell when he is being enchanted into a thrall. There is a burning smell of ozone in the Countess’s perfume, permeating every inch of her bedsheets. After over nearly decade of on-and-off travelling with his witcher, Jaskier’s head thrums with warning bells and hazy memories of the burning iron scent of fey, and maybe Countess De Stael looks simultaneously twenty and fifty, but Jaskier is bored of normal people anyway and if the Countess has unnaturally amber eyes in the moonlight, like a large predatory cat or _wolf,_ it is no one but Jaskier’s business.

And Count De Stael’s business.

Countess De Stael’s trophy husband turns out to be a heavyset man with bulging muscles and a towering frame that Jaskier needs to tilt his chin up to look in the eye. They meet after about three years of Jaskier’s dalliance with the Countess, and her greatest mistake would be to leave them alone. The Count is surprisingly dull-witted to be married to a woman of the Countess’s caliber, Jaskier judges, but he can certainly see the appeal of a muscly eye candy to hang onto at events. Catching the Count’s flinty eyes flick him up and down is a pleasant surprise he barely hesitates to take advantage of.

Jaskier takes one good look at his surly, neutral face and wide meaty palms that can probably fit around his own waist and thinks, _fuck it._

If a headboard is broken and Jaskier’s hips are bruised to a lovely shade of purple and yellow like flowers are sprouting under his skin, it is no one but Jaskier’s business.

Hmm.

It turns out Countess De Stael _is_ of faerie blood, and hates sharing what she considers her legally-owned property like the rest of her brethren which is rather hypocritical of her seeing as to how she collects lovers the same way Jaskier hoards memories of walking alongside Geralt and Roach in forests where roots are the size of carriages and the sparse sunlight gives him an excuse to stumble into his witcher’s blistering warmth and grab his witcher’s gloved fingers out of something he plays off as anxiety.

Countess De Stael also turns out to be quite adept at Old Magick, tossing electric blue and violet curses at his retreating back as he dashes for the windows, and she pulls priceless heirlooms off the shelves to hurl with surprisingly good aim so his unbuttoned shirt gets the brunt of the barrage until the Countess cracks a silvery glass bottle chock full of golden powder over his shoulder, sending him into a coughing fit when the glittering dust drowns him in the painful sensation of being burnt alive. Sensing a pause in her tirade, he stops as full-body shivers wrack his spine and his bare feet drag on the rich carpet. He hears another yell and darts his burning eyes to where he knows the Countess is just in time to catch her lips framing olden syllables and a faceful of blue lightning that sends him through a window in a spectacular array of glass and curtain fabric.

He wakes up nearly twenty hours later buried in a well-trimmed rose hedge, completely unharmed and feeling surprisingly rejuvenated considering his generally shitty day. The withered roses around him droop their heads, grey and fading. Whoops. He races off the estate with energy humming through his bones, which he blames on adrenaline.

Count De Stael had not been as good of a lay as he had hoped. And he had sacrificed a paramour he had been with for years. All in all, it is pretty disappointing no matter how exciting the actual break up portion was, Jaskier sighs, before he catches the tail-end of a tavern keeper’s whisper that the White Wolf of Rivia had been there earlier, asking for directions to the Pontar river and suddenly his day is bright again, like Geralt had reached to the sky and yanked aside thunderclouds to let the sun shine through, or something. Jaskier is a poet. When he puts in effort.

A few hours later, Jaskier’s words of indignation and joy turn into rust in his mouth and he is coughing crimson that is horrifyingly gelatinous and familiarly iron over his newly bought doublet and shoes. He almost comes to the conclusion that his day is terrible again until Geralt turns wide, yellow eyes owlishly to him, forehead creasing in stress and worry. Well. He does not really need his voice back, Jaskier decides deliriously. If not having a voice softens the harsh buttercup yellow of Geralt’s eyes in concern for Jaskier, then Jaskier does not fucking need a voice. Geralt can bloody well keep it in his nice huge, _huge_ hands. They probably can fit around his wrist like a puzzle piece far better than Countess De Stael’s did. 

That is his last coherent thought for a while.

_My lady has eyes,_

_Like burning amber iron,_

_Like some ravenous lion,_

_And away do I part,_

_With the sense in my head._

_Please m’lady, softly tread;_

_For you tread on my heart._

  
  


Jaskier has seen what being in love looks like, on himself in the mirror every time his eyes unfocus at the phantom sensation of large palms brushing against the small of his back to steady him when he stumbles and the remembrance of calloused fingertips gripped in his own, and on other’s faces; young couples wrapped up in each other as they listen to his cheerful love songs, and older faces lined by time crinkling into something younger when their eyes meet for a moment across a crowded room.

Geralt’s expression is a bit of both. He looks open, younger, his eyes burning in a way that flushes red into the tips of the bard’s ears when he lends his bright summery gaze to Jaskier to ascertain his well being. His witcher looks… soft in demeanor. He _smiles_ when he sees Jaskier. Jaskier’s blood is thrumming from nearly getting maimed by a madwoman just minutes earlier and when Geralt smiles, his _everything_ thrums with warmth at the _love_ on his witcher’s face. Gods, Geralt, _Jaskier’s_ witcher, has always been adept at plucking away pieces of his heart like a child’s sticky fingers tugging golden petals from the centre of a buttercup in sharp, jerky motions, shedding little flakes of gold onto the grass like a perfumed carpet. The soulful poet in Jaskier recognises how apt the metaphor is, and unbidden words spring to the forefront of his mind like weeds in a garden.

_He loves me…_

_He loves me not…_

_He loves me…_

_He loves me not…_

_He loves me…_

And Geralt is running, sprinting back to where _she_ is, eyes warm and face open like Jaskier has never seen before, and all Jaskier can do is stand and watch uselessly. He throws his head back to laugh before his throat tightens and closes up, this time not the fault of any curse.The well trimmed garden of Jaskier’s mind, where every rose bush and tulip has its place, is overrun with great toxic yellow buttercups peeking through the rapidly cracking foundations of his self. He crumples in on himself, suddenly completely alone.

_He loves me not._

Something that is already broken in his chest breaks further.

  
  


Jaskier decides he hates Yennefer of Vengerberg. 

The smug sense of satisfaction that settles over him when he is shaken awake from a restless sleep and practically dragged away from Rinde wanes when he spies the familiar faraway look in his beloved’s eyes and the uncharacteristic lack of alternating between guiding Roach and huffing at Jaskier’s antics, which he has been valiantly keeping up with for a solid three hours, well into late afternoon. The annoying out-of-tune jig dies, which is more than it deserves, Jaskier knows, considering it had been grating even to him.

 _Fuck it_. “Geralt?”

Yellow eyes blink at him in alarm, or at least what passes for alarm for his witcher. He looks like a cat. Jaskier would giggle if he is not as alarmed himself.

“Are you alright? You seem more broody than usual, and that is saying something. I thought I had seen the worst of it after that necrophage incident that ended with-”

“I’m sorry.” Jaskier blinks. Roach stops in her tracks as if she senses the shock oozing through his every pore. He clears his throat, taking in his witcher’s lovely side profile and chiseled features. It is not that Geralt never apologises. He does. Jaskier does not recall any particular occasion, but they have been travelling together for nearly a decade, so there must be some stupid mistake his witcher has been regretful about enough for a verbal response, right?

“I beg your pardon?”

Geralt’s eyes skitter to him without turning his head. “For your throat… I wished for peace and quiet.”

“...I see.” Jaskier rasps. And Jaskier _does_ see. His unending babbling is annoying, and it annoys Geralt. It is not new information, but it hurts nonetheless. Fuck, if he keeps getting hurt at this rate he might as well be the one doing the monster fighting to match emotional wounds with physical ones. He swallows the shards of his heart in his throat. _I love you._ “I forgive you.”

His witcher looks pained. “You shouldn’t.”

Jaskier scoffs, stitching his heart back together. “Do not tell me what I should or should not do! It’s a slippery slope, and next thing we know you’ll be saying I shouldn't follow you, I should not be writing songs about monsters and things I don’t understand-”

“You shouldn’t.” 

Jaskier gapes at his witcher’s uncharacteristic stupidity. Yennefer of Vengerberg’s influence, he is sure. Oh, who is he trying to fool, his witcher is always stupid. “Whyever not?”

“You’re going to get yourself killed.” The tone of it is a few shades too caring and out of his repertoire. They have officially diverged out of Jaskier’s very broad personal comfort zone into perilous territories that endanger his already quivering heart. It seems Yennefer of Vengerberg has managed to accomplish what Geralt’s very best friend in the whole world cannot- getting his witcher to acknowledge his own emotions. Dangerous waters indeed. Jaskier’s heart skips a few steps. Geralt glances at him then, probably catching the irregularity with his endearing freaky hearing, and Jaskier grabs the opportunity to wag a finger at his witcher’s lovely face. 

“How hypocritical, my dear _monster-hunter_!” 

Geralt huffs. “I care about what happens to you, Jaskier.”

“Oh.” What is he supposed to say to that? He weighs parroting _you shouldn’t_ , but it reveals too much of the self-deprecation Jaskier hides beneath his flamboyance and narcissism. His intestines turn liquid. “Well.”

It should be enough to know his friend cares about him. They _are_ friends now, no way around it no matter the instinctual protests the proclamation of friendship manages to drag out of Geralt. Geralt cares about him, and likes him enough to let him know albeit after a near-death experience. Perhaps the next time Jaskier is at death’s doorstep throwing a tantrum they will graduate to proclamations of love. Platonic, of course. Because Geralt does not love him romantically, and might never do so. Does Geralt even like men that way? If he does, is it just Jaskier he is averse to? Oh Melitele’s fists, his chest hurts. Why is his heart such a greedy bastard of a creature? Selfish little thing, that cannot even be _happy_ for his friend...

“Pottesfeylde!” Jaskier announces apropos of nothing, stretching his arms wide open with a full body motion that casts his new shirt open at the collar. His throat itches in the chilly air. “Lovely place- overlooks acres of flower fields!”

“Hmm?” 

“The town. Pottesfeylde.” The awkward air that has settled over them while they walk stubbornly refuses to disperse, but Jaskier is used to it enough to know to plough on in the face of resistance. “We just passed the sign!”

Geralt swivels his head to stare at said sign that they had both passed by obliviously. They both look at it for a moment. It is a nice sign- wooden, carved with the proof of youth and mischief as it is not too far from the stone and wooden buildings of the town itself for teenagers to miss. Geralt turns to Jaskier, mouth opening like there is a question on his lips and Jaskier panics aberrantly. 

“That’s enough heart-to-heart for today! I’m sure you agree!” He half-yells, pace doubling to walk ahead away from the awkward personal questions he is sure Geralt is thinking. God, if the words _are you alright_ are said, he might burst into tears from the sheer irony at how the tables have turned. He hears his name, but walks faster into the first building he sees, heaving a sigh of relief when he sees the midday bustle and busty barmaids shuffling between tables. A tavern. Someplace he and Geralt end up more often than not. Familiar. Normal. Walking into a brothel might have been a little embarrassing. 

His travel companion finds him picking at a well-designed wreath of peonies and marigolds looped around a wall hanging. Geralt raises an eyebrow at the flower-themed decorations adorning the rest of the tavern, ignoring the stares he gets from the patrons. “The rest of the town is much the same.”

“They’re celebrating something.” Jaskier mutters to his witcher and gets a grunt in reply. “What do you think they’re celebrating?” 

“Festival of Flowers, Kwaitowal! All the flowers for decorating are from the valley.” The tavern keeper answers and gestures airily at the wreath of flowers tied above the door as he passes. “If you’re here for a room, I doubt there are any left in town. We get all sorts from out of town during the festival. Good for business, mind.” 

“What’s the festival for?” The man hums thoughtfully.

“Some old elvish tradition that never really died out. Are you going to stay?”

Geralt takes a step forward and answers before Jaskier can. “No.” 

The tavern keeper shrugs flippantly and leaves just as the bard opens his mouth to protest..

“Geralt!”

“Jaskier.” The bard props his hands on his hips at the _look_ his witcher casts him.

“Geralt, we’re staying.” He points at the floor for dramatic effect. _Do not argue with me now, witcher._

“Hm. No.” Jaskier grits his teeth.

“I’m exhausted from all the trials of Rinde, because in case you don’t recall,” Geralt definitely recalls, he apologised for it earlier but Jaskier is fucking _tired_. “-I died a little while you sat around and got laid. I want to stay, dance and loosen up for a night, come on!”

“Jask.” _Jask?_ How _dare_ he call Jaskier a cute affectionate name as if nothing has changed in the past twenty four hours, as if the entire axis of Jaskier’s world has not shifted several alarming, unhappy degrees. “Do-”

“Don’t _Jask_ me, witcher. I need a drink or several, and so do you. Here.” He grabs a mug of… something, and presents it to Geralt with an angry flourish. “Come find me when you’ve drunk at least half the tavern under the table and have gotten a little more pleasant. I’ll be dancing. Come dance with me later.”

“I don’t dance.”

Jaskier titters. “Wrong thing to say, darling.”

Jaskier is not running away. He is not. It is a tactical retreat against the weight in his witcher’s eyes and the conversation he never wants to have if he is to keep his sanity.

He is not running. In fact, he sits, outside the tavern to watch the townsfolk pluck grass and collect wood, with a stilted peace that is more shock than tranquility.

He waits.

And waits.

Geralt does not join him.

The sky bruises with the colours of twilight, dusk laying a balm on the heat of the fire that is built in the middle of the town centre, where people already start to gather. Most deliberate without going to the area cleared for dancing, sipping from mugs that steam with anticipation. Several give the other ditherers faux-cursory glances, sizing up the competition or potential dance partners with eagerness veiled thinly before they choose, picking off people one by one like delicacies off a plate. Jaskier, of course, gets asked with a palm sidling up his bicep. He snorts and turns to tease or berate playfully the gall of the person who asks him a question in their touch, and-

His mouth dries at the light coloured of the man’s hair. Blond. Straw-coloured, not white. Not white.

Jaskier resolutely refuses to think about the witcher-shaped hole in his heart. And Yennefer of Vengerberg and how the love of his life he has spent a decade and more chasing-

 _Focus,_ the man. The one in front of him, not the one that is not quite human. Muscular but soft in a healthy sort of way, eyes like quicksilver promising danger from the insides of glass cabinets in apocatheries. Perhaps a soldier or guard, acquainted with the adrenaline and heavy hand Jaskier craves will purge the image of his unrequited-beloved from his mind. The man- Tristan, he learns, speaks fluidly like he likes the sound of his voice and its rises and falls, which the bard can relate to. Tristan lets him take a few perfunctory gulps of the mead the other man has brought with a chuckle, smiling at him when the taste of honey coats his tongue where a film of blood and salt had been not long before. Then the memory of it is gone as quickly as it had resurfaced.

“-drink too much, and you’ll find yourself too weak-kneed to do any of the dancing you promised.” Had Jaskier promised? His mouth ran regularly without any input from his head. Or he had promised by drinking the man’s mead as some weird small-town tradition. Either way, the bard nods his assent and drifts to the herd of couples dancing to the beat tapped out by a cheerful girl on an ancient but well-oiled drum and her companion, waiting for his dance partner to reappear.

Moments later, large hands settle at his waist, almost in triumph, earning a gasp of surprise from the bard. Once his winning-smile is fixed in place, Jaskier whirls around and startles again at the scent he catches.

_Sweat and chemicals._

The coarse hand at his hip sways him in time with the music. “Geralt?”

His witcher makes a non-committal noise, eyes wild and gold in the firelight. Fuck, his heart rate has thripled to the point where he misses a step even though he could rely on muscle memory alone to dance with his eyes closed. “I thought you couldn’t dance, you scamp!”

“I said I didn’t, not that I couldn’t.” Oh. Geralt is really drunk. The answering smirk just makes his stomach flip and his mind blank and refocus only on the warmth of a palm at his waist where his shirt is tucked. Damn he should have gotten rid of his shirt. Except there would be no casual way to rid himself of it. Maybe a drink spill? A man had passed him with a damp shirt earlier, but most people did not dance after a drink spill, and leaving Geralt’s side seems impossible when he is-

The hand presses harder, almost bruising, and Jaskier squeaks. They have stopped moving. “Where has your mind wandered to now, bard?”

“H-huh?” He stammers. When was the last time Geralt called him _bard_? “Nowhere.”

“Are you certain?” Oh sweet gods his head is a tumultuous ocean of sensation and he cannot bloody _think_ when Geralt is looking at him, eyes reflecting firelight like a predator who could eat Jaskier whole and tenderly take him apart piece by piece for seconds. His heart is louder than the beat of the song, and so much faster. There are no words, no tune that can exist for how he is feeling. His feet are shaking. “Jaskier? Bard?”

“I… believe I should lie down for a bit.” The resolve keeping him upright crumples and he does too, right in the middle of the space that has been cleared for dancing, knees hitting the dirt and sending dust into the air to flicker in the light. His witcher curses, but it almost sounds like he is whispering from the end of a long, narrow tunnel. Black claws rip at his vision. 

“...-kier! If you weren’t f… -say anything?” Why is Geralt talking so garbledly? Jaskier should give him lessons on speaking properly, like he had when he was younger. His witcher is glaring. Did something happen? Oh. Jaskier happened.

“Maybe… t’was bad idea to drink s’much.” How much had he drunk?

The world dissolves into illegible shapes and colours. Jaskier’s head is deliriously quiet as he is scooped up to someone’s chest, and the whole djinn business was… however many days ago, but Geralt had not carried him the same way as this. He slurs out a nonsense complaint into his witcher’s collarbone and does his best not to lick said collarbone. He is jostled as Geralt makes his way back to where Roach waits on the edge of the valley and groans because his witcher stumbles a few times on the path. They are both too drunk for this. Jaskier especially. He wants to lick the collarbone. “M’fine, Geralt. Promise. Sit dow’ f’godssake.”

They somehow make it to Roach and Geralt collapses into her side with Jaskier till in his witcher’s arms, earning a huff and a scrambled platitude from the drunker of the two. He is too tired or the words to form coherent syllables and affixes. “S’rry Roach. Y’re a good g’rl.”

Geralt looks like he is about to doze off himself, angry in an adorably exhausted way, although he still finds the energy to tuck a blanket around them and rearrange Jaskier in his lap. He does a double take upon realising Jaskier is still in his lap and tips his head in confusion. Knowing Geralt will mutter a sentiment along the lines of moving, Jaskier hisses weakly and steadies his swimming vision by tucking his chin into the juncture of his witcher’s neck. Said witcher makes only a small noise of protest- a win in Jaskier’s books. 

Geralt shoves at him on principle. “If I wake up and you’re still in this position, I’ll probably push you off the road.”

Is he serious? Hard to ascertain. He sounds worried.

“T’s nice.” Jaskier mumbles into his witcher’s hair. His bones are quiet, but warm from firelight and molten gold.

_Sweat and chemicals._

_A coarse hand at his hip_ \- shoving him to the side?

“Oh fuck- Jaskier!”

The sky is so very blue, Jaskier notices. His feet are not quite functioning efficiently yet, so he trips and falls _down_.

When Jaskier opens his eyes, ears _ringing_ like a _motherfucker_ , all he sees is yellow.

The soft press of grass and roots at his flesh is as familiar as the string-calluses on his fingertips or the ache that hums through his well-worn soles, but the smell is overpowering. Sweet, sickly like he remembers from his stilted childhood, and he hastily heaves his weight onto his arms and pushes upwards to break the surface of lush gold to take gulping breaths of fragrant air. His headache, a faint pounding in his temples and behind his eyes makes itself known but Jaskier does not even pause or groan because his breath is suddenly stolen away again by the shuddering pressure of his heart constricting behind his ribcage.

He stares, knees suddenly weak as a foal’s.

Jaskier sees no end to the field, barely glimpses the pale blue of his shirt under the dense layer of flowers obscuring everything and the sticky buttercup sap and seeds that cling to him. He is swimming in a massive valley of purples, reds, blues and golds stretching like a sea and shimmering with iridescence wherever the breeze rustles the silk petal heads and emerald blades. 

_“Melitele’s tits_ .” He breathes again, scrambling to his feet and spinning in a dizzy circle to commit as much of the landscape to memory as possible. “ _Melitele’s fucking_ -”

“Jaskier!” 

Someone is yelling. His headache intensifies in strength at the combined overstimulation, brain hissing inside his skull like molten metal in a flood. His vision distorts with black at the edges. He nearly topples when his feet give out from the circular momentum that blurs the world into bleeding vibrance, painting the inside of his eyelids even when he closes them. It is devastating to look at the same way it is devastating to have to face Geralt when it is so very transparent on his usually unreadable face that he has drifted away to think about Yennefer. Jaskier clamps his eyes shut and grits his teeth against the bile that suddenly burns his tongue as if summoned by the memory of _drowning in copper and iron-_

“Jaskier?” Geralt sounds closer than before, a little to the left of where Jaskier stands. The concern in his voice is staggering but loud like the clang of steel inches from his ears, so Jaskier sways, buffeted by wind, and sinks to his knees with a wounded keen ripped from his vocal chords. 

It is not the brightest of his ideas, to attempt to provoke a reaction from his already harried witcher, but Jaskier is too melodramatic and hungover to not make a scene when presented with the opportunity, especially with such a picturesque location. Geralt catches on that he is in fact alright, given the diffusing of the tension Jaskier can practically smell in the air.

“You have flowers in your hair.” His witcher rumbles absentmindedly and Jaskier is struck by toe-curling jealousy that _motherfucking Yennefer of Vengerberg_ had put that distracted and blissed quality into _his_ witcher’s voice. Something vicious and familiar settles around his heart.

“I have a _hangover!_ You will cease your shouting this instant, you brute.” Peeking from under his lashes so the world goes blurry and fractured like a fantasy, Jaskier traces the nearly contrite but amused twist of his witcher’s mouth and ponders the benefits of chasing the expression away with a soft press of lips. He relaxes into the flowerbed and throws an arm over his scarlet face. Bloody imagination. Can Geralt smell desire on Jaskier? It has not occurred to him before. Maybe Geralt can smell desire like an overwhelming perfume that fills every nostril and plugs up lungs and airways. Maybe the desire and adoration Jaskier feels with every heartbeat, and ergo Jaskier, smells unpleasant. Maybe that is why his witcher is silent in a guilty sort of way. 

“It’s a beautiful valley-”

“Sorry. For pushing you down the valley. I panicked.”

Jaskier snorts. Of course his poor traumatised witcher panicked when he woke with someone- _Jaskier_ \- in his lap. “It’s fine.”

“Hmm.” Jaskier laughs emptily and chokes on the weight of his arm, chest heaving with the heady scent of flowers flushing his cheeks.

“Where are we going next?” 

There is no response for a minute. He tenses in anticipation. “Geralt?”

“I am returning to Rinde.” Rinde. _Fucking Rinde_. Jaskier wants to burn the place to the bloody ground and dance on the ashes. Or snort them. It would be therapeutic, and he deserves nice things after the godawful month he has had.

Instead, Jaskier seals his eyes tighter, breathing in the smell of buttercups, sticky on his sleeve. “Why, pray tell?”

“I… leaving Yennefer alone was a mistake.” Did Geralt ever think that, after the first time they had parted ways near Posada? Should he be saying something? Yes, he should be saying something.

“She’s a grown-arse woman, Geralt. She can handle-” Jealousy would smell sour, Jaskier decides. Horrid and sour but cloying, clinging to clothes and in between fingers and toes. A nice surprise after one was ready to go to bed.

“I don’t want Rinde to be the last I’ll see of her.” Despite his witcher’s spoken misgivings, there is something in his tone that makes it clear to Jaskier that even if Geralt did not go back for her, Rinde would hardly be the last they would see of her. Which means Geralt is going back to Rinde simply because he wants to see Yennefer _now_. Jaskier abruptly stops breathing for the fourth time in a row. Regret must be bitter and black like smoke. An all encompassing weight in one’s chest cavity, inescapable as death itself. 

“I sincerely doubt she’ll still be there, waiting for you like some demure damsel.” He manages coherently and calmly, to his own surprise, although the words sound faintly mangled to his ears. He focuses on breathing.

“Then I’ll track her wherever she goes next.” Geralt says, like it is so easy, like that is a thing he does, as if he would ever do that for just anyone, _as if he would do the same for Jaskier._

“See you around, then.” Jaskier chirps sweetly, grinning unevenly into the crook of his elbow tucked over his face. His chest hurts. Is he still breathing? The buttercup smell is making his eyes water.

“Are you… going to get up?”

“Not yet.” Maybe never. Wait. Is his witcher still leaving yet? He peeks.

Yellow eyes peek back. “Jaskier?”

There is a lump in his throat shaped like the words _I love you_ that he swallows down.

“See you around, Geralt.”

It is not their most graceful farewell, but it is undoubtedly a goodbye judging by the fading sound of hoofsteps. Geralt is awkwardly confused; Jaskier can hear the hesitance in the cadence of his voice, but is too entrapped in the miasma of his thoughts twirling around and around like the ‘pheasant’s’ folk dances he learnt after he had left Lettenhove. When he had been learning them, he had fallen down a great deal, tripping over his own feet and planting his nose in the dirt until he could dance like he had been doing it all his life. When he had danced the night before, he had felt much the same, eighteen and naive again, dreaming of a world where he would be famous and wanted, feet spinning round and round with hands at his waist and shoulders.

It occurs to Jaskier that he has now spent nearly half his lifespan being in love with his witcher. Is there anything left of young, fresh-faced Jaskier who smelled a witcher, smelled danger and ran towards it like it were water in a desert? Jaskier has spent years of his lifetime, limited unlike Geralt and Yennefer’s, pining and writing songs about heartache. Unrequited love is an aspect of his personality, a fact and truth as much as the sky is blue.

“What does heartbreak smell like?” Jaskier blurts into thin air that swallows his voice. 

The buttercups are laughing at him.

He gets up, eventually, because he always does even if he wants to lay down in the buttercups and sleep forever.

Jaskier gets up and gets to work, pulls as many favours as possible to play at bigger courts and kingdoms, infiltrates the households of lords and ladies and sticks his fingers into enough political situations with an efficiency that nearly gets him assassinated. He spends two months hiding at his alma mater introducing himself as Professor Julian Alfred Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove before Yennefer of Vengerberg, the last person he wants to see, strides into his classroom with the poise of a predatory cat sizing up a cockroach, more than making up for how out of place she looks in her glittering floor length dress. 

The dazed stares she gets from the students, and the way she glares back with a slight modicum of anxiety, is hilarious. In fact, the entire situation is ludicrous like something out of a fever dream, so laughable, until he is left alone with her and abruptly remembers the last time they met she had threatened to geld him. He inches towards the exit. “Yennefer of Vengerberg.”

She smirks. “Bard. _Viscount_ , apparently. Although committing espionage in one’s free time is hardly regular behaviour for either occupation. Does Geralt know?” 

At least she has not spread word of his extracurriculars. “Does _he_ know you’re here? He was pretty eager to find you the last time I saw him.”

She laughs unpleasantly, moving to stand between him and his escape. Jaskier inclines his head ever so slightly to the window as if in askance. She glares.

“Jealousy is such an ugly colour, _Julian_.” Oh he does not like that. He does not like people using that name. He is purposely avoiding the truth in the bit about being jealous. Yennefer probably grasps as much from the surface of his thoughts, because she is grinning like a cat when she continues coyly. “And when was the last time you saw him? Nearly a year ago?”

She sounds annoyed. Something clicks in his mind other than the mental note to keep better track of the time, reddenning his cheeks. “Oh. He’s worried about me.” 

That is good to know, positively warms the selfish cockles of his heart. He has not been avoiding Geralt per se although he is not complaining about the break his heart has gotten these past months. No more breathless thudding every time his witcher smiles. No more smiles, either. That alone is almost enough to send him sprinting back onto the road. Yennefer frowns, a small thing that darkens her eyes to a murderous shade of violet but Jaskier can do nothing more but grin in the face of her displeasure, gleefully forgetting to plan his departure. “He sent you to find me, didn’t he?”

“I don’t do anyone’s bidding, if that is what you’re implying. He just wouldn’t shut up. Didn’t fuck as well.” She spits, and his glee is overshadowed by his… whatever the ice in his veins he refuses to name is. He swallows, and Yennefer notices. “Ah. I was just teasing you earlier, but you really are jealous, aren’t you?”

Pity, is that pity? Or is she teasing? He levels her a smoldering stare that had once made a highly trained Redanian assassin break out in cold sweat. She is unimpressed. “Don’t look at me like that, bard. I don’t need to read your mind to know. Your head is an utter mess of noise so loud I’m surprised you don’t have a headache or aren’t spouting most of them. You’re holding your tongue pretty well right now, even though Geralt tells me you never shut up.”

Jaskier decides he is _done_ with the conversation. “I don’t see a point in talking to people who don’t appreciate me, contrary to popular belief. What did you say you were here for again?”

“To ensure you’re not dead in a ditch somewhere.” Rude. But a legitimate concern. Jaskier is not the most incompetent person on the continent, but he tends to bite off more than he can chew.

“Well, as you can see- I am fine. Never been better. Healthy as a buttercup.” Jaskier tugs his stiff collar higher on his throat and smiles with teeth.

“Buttercups are poisonous.”

“Semantics.” She blinks dubiously.

“You do look fine at least. Not even a wrinkle of age or sickness. How old did you say you were?” Her eyes turn sharp as they raze him meticulously. Jaskier gulps and drops his smile like it , sweat beading. The window is so enticingly present. His classroom is on the third floor and the window ledge is steep and slippery stone, barely carved with enough handholds for a person to be able to clamber onto the frame and retain enough mobility to slip away without injury, but he could use the flat end of a blade to leverage himself up if he presses it into the crevices between the stone bricks.

Instead he gasps in mock outrage, pressing a hand over his racing heart. “You don’t ask a man his age!”

To his surprise, she laughs, a deep and amused sound that almost makes her look beautiful, almost allows Jaskier to not be petty. Unfortunately, their friendship born of mutual disrespect for authority and exasperation at Geralt has been doomed since the moment she started toying with his witcher.

“You know, you aren’t half as annoying as you make yourself out to be. Hold your tongue more often. It makes you more bearable.” He scowls. His tongue is the best part of him; he has been informed of this multiple times by lords and ladies alike. How dare she appear out of nowhere and-

“By the way, _Jaskier,_ a little tip for you. Trying to sway the political situations in three kingdoms at once without getting caught is stretching human ability by a fair amount.” The way she says _human_ makes Jaskier offended on behalf of them. Humans. Which he is.

Gods bless him, some people make him want to sleep forever.

Top of the list: Valdo Marx. The buggering bastard.

Oxenfurt is supposed to be a break away from the world of witchers and witches that Jaskier cannot seem to outrun even after years of trying, a break where he discusses the other world of monsters and adventure like it has never really happened to him and he can pretend he is explaining the songs of a complete stranger rather than his own. Professor Pankratz is distinguished and famous, a master bard who is a living legend and has written songs that the entire northern reaches of the continent have sung in taverns and classrooms. Professor Pankratz has a permanent room and classroom at Oxenfurt now because Pankratz might be a travelling troubadour, but he comes back maybe once a year during the winter season and teaches with a disconnected but professional air that is weighed with years upon years of experiences that belies the softness of youth in his features that never really faded.

Jaskier hates it. Hates that he has roots set down somewhere that is not with his witcher, hates the regularity of scheduled visits and the fact that he is visiting because he cannot be with Geralt, or that he cannot spend too much time with Geralt before they run into Yennefer and Jaskier is left feeling like an unaccomplished third party who has to _listen to them fuck in the neighbouring room for Melitele’s sake._ How the fuck do they keep running into her? Jaskier is pretty sure she is not even looking for them. If anything, she might be trying to actively avoid them, judging from some of the expressions she wore when they had met the last few times. It is an entire song and dance she and his witcher do. She is exasperated and Geralt is exasperated, then suddenly they leave him when he is singing to earn enough to pay for their rooms to go fuck in said rooms. It is annoying even without factoring in the damage it does to his heart. He hates that as well, that he is somehow the one who has done twenty years of groundwork to worm his way like a dandelion seed into his witcher’s heart, and a sorceress who tried to castrate him managed to win Geralt’s adoration after a day. He does not hate Yennefer. Hating her for loving- if that is what it is- Geralt would be hypocritical, and Jaskier might be petty but he is not cruel. Love is beautiful and irreplaceable and everyone deserves it, even insane mages with ego-related issues. Gods, Jaskier himself still falls in love at least twice a month, and it still hurts like an open wound everytime they leave him. So he does not hate Yennefer. Anymore. 

What he _does_ hate is how Valdo Marx has a townhouse in Oxenfurt and has a tendency to visit, coincidentally the same time of the year as Jaskier. Jaskier is supposed to be on break while slowly dying of boredom inside, enjoying being famous and recognised in the crown jewel of Redania, not having to sigh and facepalm everytime he is confronted by the flamboyant and narcissistic hack who cannot figure out chord progression if his life depended on it in taverns and parties.

Meeting with his exes is usually awkward and ends in bloodshed, but Jaskier is not usually the one initiating it.

“Hello, Jaskier. Your latest muse treating you well?” 

This is too personal, too intimate for a public space like the tavern they are in, and his skin crawls with discomfort and the shuddering feeling of being analysed after having his soul flayed open. The urge to bite and hurt hums in his bones.

“Has yours? Do they know you have been attracting crows to rest their feet at your eyes?” He demands, the words tripping only slightly. Jaskier has not been in Oxenfurt long, had arrived the day before after a particularly gruelling farewell with his witcher that had left him weak and wanting, and has been sipping alcohol for three hours.

“Sweet Melitele, you’ve gotten more sullen over the years, Jaskier _._ That was positively subdued, for you. I didn’t think the student who once broke a chair over the face of another academic would ever mellow out!” The incident the other man alludes to is one Jaskier holds dear to his heart, and it pangs his chest to know a fond memory would be used against him like this, even if the bastard had a point.

“People change.” Jaskier grits out from between his smile that bares too many teeth to be pleasant. People change, and Jaskier has had half his lifetime spent on the road to adventure, chasing danger like an addiction. It builds character, so he is told. “People change, but you haven’t at all, have you?”

Valdo Marx chortles in the feigned snobbish way nobles affect after a period of time. He waves a heavily jewelled hand airily, narrowly missing slicing a poor barmaid’s face open as he grabs another drink and nudges the empty flagon away with an elbow. An icy serenity has sharpened Jaskier’s vision amidst his rage, his heartbeat pounding very, very clearly, almost as if the sensory enhancements of his witcher has diffused to him after two decades.

“How flattering of you to say!” Valdo has lost the harsh insecurities that once pulled down the edges of his smile, but it only looks more fragile as he pretends they are old friends and he did not very nearly ruin Jaskier’s youthful bardic career. “Speaking of which, you haven’t aged at all. What did you do, sacrifice a bastard firstborn?”

“I am naturally gifted.” Jaskier replies through gritted teeth. 

“So you are, I’ve heard your songs.” The man traces the rim of his mug idly, observing Jaskier from under his lashes. “Chasing dangerous creatures and people who will get you killed, hmm?”

“As opposed to chasing skirts and gossip while you choke on the shackles of a life where you have achieved nothing for yourself?”

Valdo laughs and laughs, and the steady cadence of it sounds too rehearsed to be anything but false. Somehow, there is still mirth twinkling in his eyes, green as sea glass. “You never did understand the art in making others do things for me. You know, I almost missed you and your silver tongue, Jas.”

“And I don’t even spare you a thought.” He lies.

Valdo laughs again, an octave higher, almost in surprise. “Lying doesn’t suit you.”

“Fuck. Off.” Jaskier hisses, hackles rising. 

To some mild shock, the other bard complies and leaves a nearly full tankard of whatever he had been drinking on the table. He winks as he leaves. Jaskier is angry, so angry that Valdo Marx still wins, still gets the last word in like a cockroach that does not die, that he has difficulty sucking in breaths for a moment.

Then the rest of the world starts to fade back into view, and Jaskier is tired again.

Almost immediately after Marx’s seat empties, it is filled again. Irrational irritation twists the corners of Jaskier’s mouth, suddenly feeling every ounce of annoyance his witcher holds for humanity and its social niceties. Fuck, he is getting old and cantankerous- the desire to become a hermit and die in a ditch is overwhelming in some moments. He does his absolute damndest not to glare at the young upstart that blinks guilelessly back, clearly a recent Oxenfurt graduate. “How may I help you?”

The aspiring bard beams, reaching under her tunic and drawing out a notebook and charcoal. Jaskier gets a sense of apprehension and foreboding, and deja vu. Her blue eyes are lively and wild, her posture hungry for a story. So familiar it makes his heart ache. 

_I know who you are._

_You’re the witcher, Geralt of Rivia!_

“Are you professor Pankratz?” She blushes at his eyebrow raise and sets her lips in a grim line.

“I certainly hope that was a rhetorical question and you do not have a habit of approaching random men in a tavern.” _Hypocrite_ , his conscience howls. The bard looks mortified. He takes pity on her stuttered nonanswer. “I am. I have never taught _you_ , however, or your question would have been all the more senseless. Do I get the pleasure of knowing to whom I speak with?”

She straightens her spine like a soldier during inspection, hands gripping her notebook so tight her knuckles turn white. She breathes out evely. “Daven. Of Cidaris.”

It sounds practiced. Good for her.

“Well, Miss Daven, what can I do for you?” Her clothes are fine and shiny in the way court clothes are without being made for the travelling life of an unemployed and courtless bard. Jaskier is intimately familiar with how quickly burrs and thistles rip at the silk seams and scratch away threads when one sleeps in the wilderness, and her clothes are untouched and pretty. It is like looking into a mirror. The world will not be kind to her, not to her profession or gender, and the whisper of war within the decade will harshen her into a formidable young woman out of necessity. He feels almost indulgent in talking to her, like he has to be careful so as not to sway her path set by destiny to be something great. 

“I am looking for inspiration, a muse-”

_-you smell of death and destiny! Heroics and heartbreak._

_It’s onion._

“-tell your story,” 

_Right, yeah. Yeah. Ooh, I could be your barker, spreading the tales of Geralt of Rivia, the-_

_-the Butcher of Blaviken._

“-you be the subject of my first song?”

“Miss Daven, there is hardly a need for that; most of my exploits with the White Wolf of Rivia are already in written- that is, lyric form.” 

“No, no, you misunderstand. I don’t want to write about the witcher. I only want to write about you.”

He surveys the determination on her face, startled in a dissociated sort of way. He misses Geralt. Misses things being simple and misses being twenty and stupid enough to chase muses and danger like it were songs. “Me? I am flattered-”

She beams and turns her notebook to a page, speaking rapidly. She is a bard, through and through. “I’ve already done some research- I know you-”

 _I know who you are._ The room is suspended in midwinter, goosebumps breaking the creamy texture of his skin. His collar cuts off his air supply. _Heads turn, a paralysed sort of hush filtering into the previously rowdy tavern like the first snow of winter settling soft as a dove on a ruinous battlefield to shield the world from the horrors committed on the surface of the earth._

_You’re the witcher-_

He leaps to his feet, the screech of the chair dragging across the floor silencing idle chatter across the room. 

_-Geralt of Rivia!_

The gazes of many bore into his back like needles in his skin. “-but I have to decline.”

_Called it._

Daven is unphased by his pronouncement, granite building behind her eyes. She puts her book down. Her mouth opens, probably to query further, but Jaskier clumsily drops a few coins on the table where they bounce and reflect firelight like droplets of molten gold and half runs away from her. Her voice carries, a bell among the muted murmurs.

“Why don’t you want stories written about you?” 

He had, when he was younger. It had been all he wanted- to be sung about and remembered like he was worthy of being documented by historians and scholars, but destiny decided long ago that he is no protagonist. Maybe he had had a chance of being one, maybe he could have stayed a witcher’s comedic relief forever, but dreaming is of no use to him anymore. He has chosen his role, chosen to have control. He turns his head to catch her eye. 

“The bard is always the narrator, not the other way around.” He smiles, and goes.

Daven glares in displeasure at his retreat. If she is anything like Jaskier was, she will follow and pester relentlessly. He almost waits for her outside the tavern.

He does not, and she does not follow. It eases his breathing. The next portion of his day will go smoother without her or anyone else. Gods, he misses being young and stupid.

Valdo Marx’s Oxenfurt townhouse key rests heavy in his pocket.

He makes it halfway down the street from the tavern before he bursts into frenzied laughter, fingers fumbling for the matches he keeps in his pockets. A passerby stares in astonishment at his breakdown, seeming to recognise him, so Jaskier makes his escape in the moonless night under a cloudless sky.

“Time to move on, Jas.” He tells himself. Being obsessed with decades-old feelings is psychotic.

Valdo Marx’s house burns and Jaskier laughs and laughs until tears roll down his cheeks.

_“It burns and burns_

_No spell on this earth shall fix my blunder_

_Nor my aching heart torn to shreds asunder_

_But throw me a smile like it is precious_

_And my day is alight again!_

_Oh you phenomenal, lovely thing_

_With fire in your eyes_

_And I fall to your blight again.”_

“That’s a new one, isn’t it?” 

Jaskier’s inhale rattles. “I wrote it months back, actually.”

Geralt side-eyes him curiously. He is more than a little bit drunk, Jaskier thinks; there is a droplet of ale glistening on his upper lip that his witcher seems not to notice. “You wrote it while we were apart?”

“Not everything is about you, my dear. But your jealousy is welcome- if unwarranted. I am already composing a new song about my darling muse.” The bard brushes the droplet away with light and exceedingly gentle fingers, smiling at the way the other man blinks in surprise, eyes dilating from the stimulation. “Go back to our room to sleep. You look tired, and we have a monster to hunt tomorrow.”

Geralt frowns. “You’re not coming with me tomorrow. You're staying here. ‘S safe here.”

Jaskier laughs. His witcher’s breath is hot against his cheek when the bard turns away. “Since when do I listen to a word you say?”

In moments like this, it is difficult to remember that Geralt does not usually drink this much and that last he heard, a lilac-eyed witch had been seen with his witcher before Jaskier had caught up with him. Then the moment fades, and logic strips him of his ability to pretend the smolder he sees in his witcher is meant for him. He stands up. “Come on then, my witcher. You cannot be too drunk to stand when you face down whatever hag or ghoul thing has been striking fear into the hearts of lesser men. That’s not how stories go.”

“How do the stories go?” 

Jaskier thinks. And thinks. About yellow eyes tracking him when he sings and warm indents in beds in the mornings. Sometimes, he can pretend. Pretend that the scent of his witcher on his clothes is intimacy beyond the sort travelling companions have when they have been glued at the hip due to circumstance, pretend the way Geralt smiles without using his mouth is just for him and pretend that he has not seen his witcher’s smiles for Yennefer of Vengerberg. _The story is-_ “Not like this, that’s for sure.”

Tomorrow when Geralt wakes up Jaskier will be back to pretending and not-pretending because the story is this- there is a bard utterly consumed with the way he feels when his heart is ripped out of his chest after he chases fleeting fancies for half his life.

Except that then there is a hunt, a half-written song and hands that can snap necks that _does things_ for Jaskier. The niggling fear at the back of his mind that his witcher will smell his desire for Geralt rears like an old friend or bad habit after the previous day’s too-transparent display, twisting his teeth and tongue into horrible tangles that only allow caricatures of his usual eloquence to spill through when he tries to flirt with the women who can kill him with very little effort. Jaskier admires that trait in particular greatly.

Oh. And bloody Yennefer of Vengerberg, Jaskier cannot seem to outrun her shadow. It is almost suspicious how often they meet. Her escort, however, is a complete and utter imbecile, riling up people who can and will stab him in his sleep if he keeps up his ridiculous utterances. Hell, Jaskier will stab him himself if _the great sir Eyck_ does not keep his mouth shut, but Jaskier is not a protagonist or the antagonist of anyone’s story. So he cocks his head to the side and listens like a stray bird in a forest, wary of its predators which might as well be the other members of their dragon-hunting troupe, chattering among themselves. Eyck will die before the day is up, he is certain. It will be _very tragic_ and Jaskier can mourn him dramatically for five minutes and not think about him ever again. Everything will be fine.

Everything goes to shit. 

“I imagine you're probably-”

His witcher growls. “Damn it, Jaskier! Why is it whenever I find myself in a pile of shit these days, it's you, shoveling it?”

“Well,” He swallows, mind blank with the sort of blankness that is terrifying in how it seems to eat into the existence of everything else. “-that's not fair.”

_It’s not fair._

“The Child Surprise, the djinn, all of it!” Hysteria is bubbling in his throat. Jaskier wants to laugh and sob and curl into the hollow of a tree and hibernate for the next sixty years until Geralt has forgotten who he is. It is an old, unwarranted fear- that Geralt will never remember him, that Jaskier’s name will be as short-lived as the flowers beneath his feet. Geralt is long-lived, if not immortal, so what is one pesky bard in the grand scheme of things? A bard is a historian, a narrator to be remembered through the stories they write. Jaskier had been prepared to be forgotten like the name of a fine wine sampled in a foreign country, not to be forced into finding solace in the nightmare that he may be more akin to the scars marring his witcher’s torso, scars Jaskier loves but Geralt hates. _Hate_ , what a frightful concept.

_Geralt will hate him._

Geralt will not forget this. Geralt will not forget him. His witcher’s teeth are bared like the predator Jaskier always knew he was, the wolf Jaskier wrote him to be, and Jaskier has always been a coward so it is unlike him to forget his witcher could hurt him. And Jaskier would _let_ him.

“If life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands.”

“Right. Uh…” Now would be the appropriate time to defend himself, the last chance to say something worthwhile or confess his love and pray for a rebound in Yennefer’s shadow, which is already more than he dares to hope for, but the very idea of taking advantage of the man he loves and the mirrored heartache that might be felt makes Jaskier sick to his stomach. “Right, then.” 

How anticlimactic. It will come back out later- the ugly wild thing under his skin. Not yet. _Not yet._

“I'll… I'll go get the rest of the story from the others.” Silence. Bitter, grieving silence. Jaskier has always admired his witcher’s ability to convey so much without speaking a word, when Jaskier would use countless and still never be able to say what he wants to say. What should he say?

_I love you._

“See you around, Geralt.” 

Except that he cannot ever see Geralt again, because it would kill him. It would rip open his chest and pull out his organs for display. And Jaskier is so tired of being vulnerable and hurting all the time, of wearing his heart on his sleeve so someone might see it and cradle it in their palms and never let go like it is a little songbird with bright eyes like jewels that was picked out of a rosebush by scarred hands. 

He is so tired. 

His ears are ringing. Geralt has yelled louder, Jaskier has heard cacophonies of anguish and music far louder, but somehow he doubts any of them can drown out the _fucking ringing._ He can hear it in his spine, in his skull even when he covers his ears, and it is so loud his wrists are brittle with the vibration. He runs and runs and barely stops himself before he smashes his skull open on the rocks he trips over. He is going the wrong direction. There is no one where he runs. He throws his feet out from under himself and barely misses crushing his lute, which twangs discordantly from where he has flung it in his haste. 

Jaskier lies down in the grass among his namesake and a multitude of wild flowers, breathing in the scents and earth, and goes still. The pressure of foliage and roots is familiar. Heartache- heartbreak is familiar. He resolutely does not cry. It would not be dignified.

The sky is clear and brilliantly blue as a pool of water. He hums absentmindedly, and thinks hard about buttercups smothering a field in poisonous yellow.

  
  


“He loves me not.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Why was there a flower field at the end, you ask? Er. Jaskier grew it. The sequel is going to be so much fun to write.
> 
> The tag 'unreliable narrator' is there for a reason. What Jaskier sees and interprets may be utter bullshit (i.e: what he thinks some of the dynamics between Yennefer and Geralt are) and Jaskier has a tendency to exaggerate. The eldritch horror hunt during the Geralt and Jaskier's second meeting is a lot different (read as: a lot less scary) from Geralt's perspective, for... reasons (Geralt can't see through the creature's glamour and Jaskier doesn't know it is supposed to be glamoured.).  
>  I spent a night staying awake to write a lot of poetry instead of sleeping. You're welcome. The 'seasons song' Jaskier sings is part of a MUCH longer poem I wrote, titled 'Seasonal Refrain'.
> 
> Next up, a continuation (you can read it as standalone if you wish, since it is essentially post ep6) where Jaskier turns out to be a faerie (noticeable if you read between the lines), which I will also somehow squeeze into canon compliancy. No rest for the wicked. This fic is really just trying to nail down Jaskier’s character and build up to the next fic. Breaking your heart was just a fun little side effect.
> 
> Find me on tumblr for updates, sneak peaks, ect.
> 
> [@Might-be-entropy](https://might-be-entropy.tumblr.com/)


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